Ribbon Skirt – Bite Down | Album Review

Mint Records Inc.

In 1980, Vince Clark and Andy Fletcher formed a band called Composition of Sound. Their music wasn’t really gaining traction, and they became a bit embarrassed about their name. It was stuffy, slightly dull, and didn’t fully connote their sound. They attended a synthpop concert, a burgeoning genre in the UK in the years after cheap synthesizers hit the market, and were inspired to make a sharp change in style. With that shift, they decided it would be a good time to ditch the name, and they landed on borrowing the title of a French fashion magazine – Depeche Mode. We’ll never know if Composition of Sound’s change in style would have taken off without the name change, but shortly after becoming Depeche Mode, their ascent to stardom began to take shape. 

Though their previous moniker, Love Language, was nowhere near “Composition of Sound” levels of generic-sounding pretension, Montreal rock band Ribbon Skirt, led by vocalist/guitarist Tashiina Buswa and guitarist Billy Riley, are following a similar path with a new name and a darker, more dynamic sound. “We needed a little bit of a refresh,” the band describes one of their last shows as Love Language in the Summer of 2024. “Billy came up with [Ribbon Skirt], which is kinda funny.” Tashiina’s Anishinaabe heritage inspired the new name - one that conjures her native identity and the tapestry of influences that inform the band’s new direction on their debut album, Bite Down. Ribbon skirts, worn by women of several native American tribes, could be seen as a means of continuity between the ceremonial and the everyday. Similarly, the band uses this new project to bridge their native identity with a contemporary rock aesthetic.

Photo by Ani Harroch

The band is working overtime as they usher in the Ribbon Skirt era. I had a special opportunity to speak with Tashiina and Billy at the tail end of this year’s SXSW, where they played nine shows in four days. “It’s crazy how insane it can make you feel,” Tashiina says as she describes the feeling of playing a show for a crowd of two people on the same weekend that they played in front of hundreds. After spending a couple of months with Bite Down and admiring the work that the band is putting in, I feel confident that they’ve played their last show in front of a single-digit crowd. With a fresh name, some new collaborators, and several years of experience under their belts, Ribbon Skirt have put together a collection of tracks that will be very difficult to ignore. 

The album’s opening track, “Deadhorse,” sets a moody tone with a 45-second introduction of drums and effect-laden guitar, unfolding and laying the song's foundation before the vocals come in. Lyrically, “Deadhorse” establishes a few of the album’s core themes: occupying space, feeling invisible, and getting stuck in unwanted cycles. Mentions of “standing beneath the cross” and “rolling away the stone” evoke biblical imagery that highlights Tashiina’s presence as an Anishinaabe woman in our current context, both in her compulsion to call upon a higher power and call out the deficiencies of modern Western culture. “Cellophane,” Bite Down’s lead single, follows with a similarly moody, post-punk ambiance and an extra sticky hook. Her clever combo of desperate plea and biting critique continues with an evocative cry of “save me, white Jesus,” comically calling out the same imperialistic veneer intended to obscure native identity.

When I spoke with the band about their organic songwriting partnership and process, they outlined an intuitive workflow. Most of the time, they get into their jam space until Billy lands on a guitar part he likes, and then Tashiina writes a vocal melody. “We hit the nail on the head over and over again until something happens… the songs are pretty barebones, and then we build them out in the studio. It’s a pretty long process,” they say with a smile that acknowledges the challenges but also communicates pride in what they’ve created. Ribbon Skirt’s process doesn’t sound easy, but the results are diverse, polished, and highly dynamic.

After a strong start, the following two tracks, “Off Rez” and “Wrong Planet,” make up my favorite one-two punch on the entire record. “[“Off Rez”] had so many different lives,” says Tashi. “It still didn’t really end up where we wanted it to… I think at some point, you just have to let go of it.” Hearing that about one of my favorite songs on the record was hard to fathom. “Off Rez” represents a more defiant shift in tone and features some of my favorite lines on the record as Tashiina playfully mocks who other people think she should be. The line “they want 2000s Buffy Marie” references the famed singer-songwriter who was recently stripped of several cultural recognitions after a 2023 report revealed that she had fabricated the Indigenous ancestry on which much of her musical identity relied. 

When I asked them directly about reconciling native heritage with Western musical culture, Tashiina said, “We’re a rock band…I think it’s important to take up space in places that you wouldn’t normally find indigenous people.” Ribbon Skirt don’t seem interested in engaging with tokenization; they’re letting the music speak for itself. “Wrong Planet” is in contention for my track of the year, as Tashiina’s performance here takes the best parts of 2010s post-punk sprechgesang and Courtney Love’s low register screaming. The vocalization about two-thirds into the song that leads into an explosion of pure catharsis is the most memorable moment on the record - one that I cannot wait to experience live when they (hopefully) come to Atlanta on the tour they alluded to this Fall.

Side B of the record is just as strong as the first, with a handful of daring sonic experiments that find the band exploring the farther reaches of their sound. “Cut” is a second-half gem with a fresh instrumental palette - acoustic guitar, subtle strings, and a buoyant piano section. “Look What You Did” comes close to spunky indie pop à la Wet Leg or English Teacher. “41” has a healthy dose of autotune, and “Earth Eater” wraps things up with a seismic closer that the band wisely chose as the final single leading up to Bite Down’s release. It’s all wrapped up in a tight 36-minute package that keeps things fresh and exciting the entire time without giving anyone genre whiplash - it all makes sense within the new identity that the band is cultivating.

Over the course of these nine tracks, Ribbon Skirt set out a few different possible paths forward in the post-Love-Language era  – all of which excite me for the future of the band. In an indie landscape that feels oversaturated with nervy post-punk and playlist-friendly shoegaze, Ribbon Skirt have made something that feels relevant without being overdone. Whether it was the renewed energy brought by the name change or simply the culmination of years of hard work and experience, Tashiina and Billy have crafted their best project yet, and I fully expect to see Bite Down covered as one of the most exciting debut albums of 2025.

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Parker White is a tech salesperson moonlighting as a music writer. When not attending local shows in Atlanta or digging for new tunes, he’s hosting movie nights, hiking/running, or hanging out with his beloved cat, Reba McEntire. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @parkerdoubleyoo, and you can read other stuff he’s written over on his Substack.

Glare – Sunset Funeral | Album Review

Deathwish Inc.

Music nerds love to talk about tone. As a failed musician myself, I’m obsessed with a great tone despite never being able to achieve one in any of the bands I’ve been a part of over the last fifteen years. I could write a novel’s worth about records with great tones, like the futuristic post-punk frenzy of Wipers’ 1981 seminal sophomore LP Youth Of America, the thick smoked-out sound of Acid King’s 1999 stoner rock masterpiece Busse Woods, or the crystal-clear shimmering production of Porcupine Tree’s 2005 contemporary prog cornerstone Deadwing. It’s one thing to have an album full of great songs, but when the songs actually sound great and everything is dialed in just the way it should be, the listening experience is that much better. That is the case with Sunset Funeral, the tonally impressive debut album from Texas alternative rock group Glare.

The old adage of bands having their entire lives to make their first album is Glare’s call to arms: for eight years, they’ve been slowly churning out singles and EPs, starting with 2017’s Into You and 2018’s Void In Blue, both successful initial projects that have garnered millions of streams since their release last decade. In 2021, Glare returned with Heavenly, their most substantial offering thus far but still not completely reflective of the band they’ve become. Their eleven-song output that precedes this new album is but a blueprint, a test run, a work in progress, the calm before the Sunset. These new eleven songs that make up the band’s debut LP are explosive from top to bottom and result in some of the biggest-sounding independent rock music I’ve heard in the last year and a half. This is a windows-down with the car radio cranked type of album, a get-a-call-from-your-landlord-to-stop-making-so-much-noise-during-“quiet-hours” type of album, a blissed-out blast of ‘90s alternative reignited for the modern era.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the band name Glare, the album name Sunset Funeral, the dreamy pastel photo album cover that goes with it, and the track names therein like “Chlorinehouse” and “Different Hue” all make it very obvious what this band is all about: thickly layered guitars, vocals so washed in reverb you could shower in them, and a general reliance on big, atmospheric rock that lets them sit comfortably with contemporaries like Downward and Prize Horse. The band and album scream modern shoegaze (or, blech, “nugaze”), but they scream it with such confidence: a big pedal energy attitude of ‘This is who we are, this is what we do, and we’re going to do it as well, if not better than anyone in the monsoon of bands filled with former emos who discovered the classic run of Dinosaur Jr. albums.’ Additionally, Glare further sets themselves apart from everyone else with their tone expertly dialed in on each element. It’s one thing to get the guitars just right in a shoegaze band: that’s the part most people focus on, but Glare has clearly spent the time to make sure every member’s instrument is showcased in a noticeable way. Perhaps the strongest of them is the drums, which have one of the clearest and most thunderous sounds on a modern record of this style that I’ve ever heard.

If you heard any of the Sunset Funeral advance cuts — the sweet and groovy “Guts,” the full-force rocker “Nü Burn,” or the overarchingly thematic tone-setting album opener “Mourning Haze” — you already got a taste of Glare’s perfection of their genre. It’s not always common for a band to deliver an entire project that lives up to, and in some cases exceeds, the power of its singles, but that’s only part of what makes this album feel so special. As soon as I turned on “Mourning Haze” for the first time, I couldn’t believe how great it sounded for a first song, with its room-filling volume and a power that I’ve rarely heard matched this decade. There are only about twenty seconds of relenting when “Kiss The Sun” comes in next, until it bursts into another bright headbanger, riding the line of melody and heaviness reminiscent of influential bands like Torche and Hum.

Sunset Funeral is an album that feels so good to be lost in; its pacing is such a perfect rhythm that it’s easy not to notice that you’re halfway through the tracklist by the time “Nü Burn” begins. Glare seamlessly weave their way through every moment of this record, even down to the instrumental interlude “Felt,” which builds up to “Nü Burn” just as breezily as it winds down from “Chlorinehouse.” The soft closer “Different Hue” glides along so smoothly that it sounds completely natural leading back into “Mourning Haze” if you start the record over again. I love finding great three-track runs on albums, like “Begin The Begin” -> “These Days” -> “Fall On Me” on R.E.M.’s 1986 alternative classic Lifes Rich Pageant, or the semi-suite of “Closer You Are” -> “Auditorium” -> “Motor Away” on Guided By Voices’ 1995 landmark lo-fi odyssey Alien Lanes. You could throw a dart anywhere on Sunset Funeral and get a great three-track run, which I suppose makes the entire album a great eleven-track run, a rare feat in 2020s emo-adjacent music.

In a style that can often be monotonous or too heavy-handed in its ‘90s worship, Glare stands atop the slew of guitar rock bands with finesse, grace, and panache (pardon my French). Whether it’s on more relaxed tracks like “Saudade” and the almost-eponymous “Sungrave,” or on any of the bombastic singles, the band breathes new life into shoegaze with every second of Sunset Funeral’s runtime. It’s one of the tightest debut albums I’ve heard from a new band this decade, and possibly even on a longer timeline than that. I have no doubt that by 2030, Sunset Funeral will be talked about the way we talk about Nothing’s Guilty Of Everything, Title Fight’s Hyperview, and Turnover’s Peripheral Vision, and for my money, I’d put it above those last two for sure. Get sucked in by the sunset, Glare is here.

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Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

Babe Rainbow – Slipper imp and shakaerator | Album Review

p(doom) records

I was a freshman in college the first time I heard Babe Rainbow. I have a relatively blurry view of my life up until this point, but for some reason, this memory is clear. Driving around my hometown on a school break, one of my friends pulled a classic “Have you ever heard this?” and put on “Johny Says Stay Cool” off the Aussie psych-rock trio’s self-titled debut. We drove to nowhere in particular, and let the song play at least 15 times, paying attention to something new each go around. At that point in time, my Tumblr-ified “indie” alternative music taste hadn’t prepared me for something so light and quippy and fun. The congas, the warbly falsetto vocals, the whole “breathe in / breathe out” motif. It floors me to think that my early adolescence was exclusively soundtracked by gut-wrenching songs like The 1975’s “Sex” or Halsey’s Room 93 EP (real ones know that was her peak) when there was music out there that felt like the sun was shining down on you. 

Babe Rainbow have stayed in my rotation ever since that drive around Long Island suburbia. As I’ve grown, they have, too; traveling the world, exploring new ways to approach their sound, and bringing on a rotating cast of collaborators. Now, just past their tenth year as a group, Babe Rainbow are going back to their roots—in more ways than one.

Their first album since 2022, Slipper imp and shakaerator sees Babe Rainbow using everything that was so irresistible about their self-titled and reimagining it through all of the sounds and styles they’ve absorbed over the last decade. But before even giving the album a listen, I had to answer one question: What exactly is a slipper imp and shakaerator? All those letters strung together didn’t feel like English. At first, I thought it was some Australian slang, but after doing some research, I found that it’s actually a farming tool. A plow. A specific brand of plow. The Bunyip Slipper Imp and Shakaerator was a new, stronger kind of plow meant to cut through the harsh Australian terrain. 

What the hell, sure. 

An early ad for the Bunyip Slipper Imp and Shakaerator

It seemed random until I was reminded that the members of Babe Rainbow (Angus Dowling, Jack “Cool-Breeze” Crowther, and Elliot “Dr. Love Wisdom” O’Reilly) lived in the macadamia orchard of an avocado farm as teens. Talk about literally going back to your roots. The title makes it all a little concept-y, serving as a signal that the music underneath it will feel like the group coming home to their psychedelic surf rock sound. 

It’s probably self-evident, but Babe Rainbow have never been ones to take themselves too seriously. I saw the group last October at the Brooklyn Bowl, where they kept letting the audience know how grateful they were to be playing in this half-bowling-alley, half-concert-venue in Williamsburg. I swore Dowling was gonna fall off the stage from spinning around so much. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was mid-shrooms trip during their set. They continually returned to the fact that they’re just some surfer bros from Byron Bay, as if we already couldn’t tell from their thick accents, luscious blond locks, and overall hippie disposition.

Babe Rainbow exist in the same ecosystem as psych-rock groups like Allah-Las and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, but they take it to an entirely different level, leaning even further into what Dowling refers to as “the powers of the Rainbow,” which may or may not include the powers of magic mushrooms. 

Gizz leader Stu Mackenzie has played a major role in Babe Rainbow’s story. He acted as their guide into the Aussie scene, producing their breakout self-titled debut. Slipper imp and shakaerator is Babe Rainbow’s first album on KGLW’s independent label, p(doom), and Mackenzie is back at the helm as a producer, while also catching a few features in the tracklist. Their long-standing relationship speaks to the hyper-collaborative ethos of the psych-rock scene, and definitely helps Babe Rainbow get even weirder with it (if that’s even possible).

Slipper imp and shakaerator opens with the deep-fried, phaser-heavy, ultra-funky “What is ashwagandha,” using a gritty spoken word intro to guide listeners into the seemingly endless layers of surfy guitars, thick basslines, and echoey flute. It gave me the same fuzzy feelings I got the first time I heard “Johny Says Stay Cool,” and that told me everything I needed to know about the album in its first four minutes. 

That breezy, sunshiny psych-rock is present throughout the whole album, with the tracklist branching off into different renditions. Single “Like cleopatra” has an ‘80s funk-meets-disco lean, complete with all the ‘do do do’s you’d expect. Reverb-heavy guitar riffs, echoing synth passes, and some literal beeps and boops make it feel like you’re flying away in the spaceship the group is singing about. “Apollonia” takes an instrumental turn, with acoustic guitar dripping in reverb and some sci-fi synth swells that create an eerie dissonance. The guitar patterns sound like the exact middle ground between Spanish guitar and Indian sitar. The track is hypnotic and sneakily moving and has slowly become one of my favorites. It’s a moment where Babe Rainbow turn their quintessential sound on its head, reminding listeners of all the other influences they’ve picked up over the years. Putting the acoustic guitar and flute through similar effects as the synths creates an entrancing mixture of analog and digital, something else the group seems to love to explore. 

Aussie rock shaman and longtime friend of the band Stu Mackenzie offers up some of his classic blown-out guitar textures on “When the milk flows,” a mid-album track that feels like it could soundtrack a round of Mario Kart (and I say that extremely complimentary). Some signal tones and French spoken-word lead us in, giving the illusion of a flight preparing for takeoff. The background synth sequences play with that in-transit sense of urgency, building tension with the sheer tempo, letting the vocals (texturized with a vocoder) double down on that build, then exploding through the fuzzy, Gizz-esque electric guitar passes. The track eventually goes into a half-time break, creating an undeniable groove that eases all of the tension before fading out. 

The following track, “Mt dub,” creates a circling psych jam that sounds like a mixture of the funk of FKJ and the hypnotics of Good Morning. The vocoder returns on the opening lines, “The islands recommended for its dazzling rocks / Superbloom / Underwater rainforest / Rock and roll pours from the record stores / Welcome to the golden age sleep traveler,” this time sounding oddly similar to those on Kacey Musgraves’s “Oh, What A World.” On this trippy, laid-back groove, Babe Rainbow chose to remind listeners of their inherent powers in the hook “You’re underestimated, you’re more loved than you know,” with vocals that weave themselves through the same spiraling jam as the orchestral synths and persistent bass. 

If nothing else, the boys of Babe Rainbow use Slipper imp and shakaerator to once again profess their love for all things hippie and good. Single “LONG LIVE THE WILDERNESS” is basically asking listeners to sit down and smell the roses (“You’re living your life too fast”) and trust that nature will guide them where they’re meant to be, even if that ends up being a golf course (“I’m so green on the back nine”). When we take our guard down and let the Earth, Sun, Moon, and stars take us away, all we have to do is enjoy what’s around us and be ready for more good to come. Dreamy closer “re-ju-ven-ate” is a beachy, almost-instrumental akin to Khruangbin, another band in Babe Rainbow’s sphere of psychedelic surf rock. Its few lyrics concisely sum up Babe Rainbow’s entire ethos for the past decade: abundance for everyone. 

Slipper imp and shakaerator sees Babe Rainbow at their best: weird, surprising, and unabashedly themselves with little to no filter. Their years of travel and cultural exchange proved fruitful, giving Australia’s most eccentric trio new ways to harness their psychedelic powers into one wholesome, homegrown, kaleidoscopic trip. 

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Cassidy is a culture writer and researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including but not limited to rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Substack. 

Great Grandpa – Patience, Moonbeam | Album Review

Run for Cover Records

Back in January, I told my partner that 2025 needed to be a year of deliberate change in our lives. We’d been living together for more than a year, and while we were comfortable, there was a complacency creeping in that neither of us were ready to accept. A string of events during the last quarter of 2024, ranging from personal reckonings with identity and loss to constant political anxiety, made me realize that something had to change, and our routines were all we had power over at that moment. I began applying to different day jobs again, they started making art in their free time, I rekindled my love for creative writing, and began the arduous process of teaching myself how to play the acoustic guitar that has been burning a hole in our wall. Now, even as many of our surroundings are the same, we are different. 

If there’s one thing that Great Grandpa would know about, it’s metamorphosis. The Seattle five-piece began in the mid-2010s by playing the brand of grungy indie rock synonymous with their hometown, but their first two studio albums saw them gradually sanding the noise off their sound. What was uncovered was a dynamic band whose tastes spanned all of indie rock, with 2019’s excellent Four of Arrows running the gamut from fuzzed-out emo to misty-eyed folk, all tied together by Al Menne’s ever-expressive voice. Then the pandemic hit, and all of that was put in jeopardy. It was unclear if Great Grandpa would still exist as lockdown sent its members on diverging paths. After years spent apart and some beautiful solo records, the quintet came back together to record starting in 2023, with Menne plainly stating upon the release of lead single “Kid” last year: “Time passed, and I missed my friends.” Patience, Moonbeam sounds exactly like what it is – five people who love each other dearly, reconnecting and bonding for the first time in years. It’s a fun, unpredictable, and bold exchange of ideas that reflects the experience of each contributor. 

There is a new sense of sharing the load that makes the record refreshingly light on its feet. While songwriting has always been a collaborative process for Great Grandpa, guitarist Pat Goodwin contributed the lion’s share of the lyrics on previous records, particularly Four of Arrows. Patience, Moonbeam, by comparison, features a few songs written entirely by Menne and drummer Cam LaFlam in addition to Goodwin’s own contributions, and it gives the songs a freewheeling feeling even as darkness looms in the background. Synthesizers, strings, banjo, and walls of electric guitar all play their role under the paradoxically cozy and adventurous alt-country umbrella that many of these songs fall under. 

“Ladybug,” the first side’s playful high point, puts every bit of that spirit on display. Menne’s hook is warped by vocal effects and a thick synth lead before settling into a jangly jaunt full of winking pop culture references. It’s easy to imagine Menne beaming as he sings “Father of the ladybug, dressed like Donald Glover on the GQ cover” in the playful pre-chorus. Even in moments where it’s clear the band are having a blast, they’re never afraid to let their guard down. The levity of “Ladybug” sells the yearning in the bridge harder than straight-laced melancholy ever could, turning it into something of a thesis for Patience, Moonbeam. As everyone sings, “Semitones are the distance between lines / All I think about is you sometimes, all the time,” I can hear just how much these five friends missed making music together. 

Immediately after, “Kiss the Dice” uses its brief runtime to send up the shifting perspectives that come with lived years. “I used to kiss the dice and roll / Now I’ve got a steady word,” hums Menne, relapsing into uncertainty as the outro fills out, “Do you think that that is worth something?” Even as he’s learned to take charge and lean into the changes life brings, that sting of anxiety never fully goes away. For as morose as their previous album could get, there’s a weariness to moments on Patience, Moonbeam that can only be the result of how much the five-piece has grown up over half a decade. The quiet strings in the intro of the opener, “Never Rest,” echo the nighttime air on the cover art, with the moon parting clouds as the song begins to evolve. First, the drums ground the dreamlike piece in a lush acoustic ballad before slowly erupting in an electric finish. 

European treks and phone calls in the track’s lyrics make meaning feel elusive until Pat Goodwin’s own voice chimes in with Menne’s for the last line: “Coming son, the winter has its dark hum, how can I retain some sight?” The doubt hanging over the track stems from his and bassist Carrie’s new role as parents – after all, how good will your guidance be when you’re actively figuring this life thing out yourself? “Junior” picks up that thread, painting a scene of a family feud and troublemaking between farm boys. Pigs are maimed, dogs are shot, and “light crimes” are committed, all from a concerned but compassionate father’s perspective. Menne dips into his lower register many times throughout the album, but nowhere is it as striking as the way he embodies the titular Junior’s reckless antics in a distinct twang.

He went swinging with a young man’s wiles
I saw him twirling and punching wild

For all the wonder and wisdom Patience, Moonbeam offers in the first half, the most powerful revelations lie in side B. “Doom” acts as a sort of centerpiece, drip-feeding tech-induced anxiety with images both dystopian and apocalyptic. “Violent screens,” “cardboard meals,” and “stocks on a good deal” are contrasted with the thrills of connection as the band alternates time signatures in the verse and chorus. The record’s most cathartic release comes in the reprise of a hook from an earlier song, “Emma,” complete with a titanic riff that gives any other song in their catalog a run for its money. All the elaborate scenery is abandoned for the blunt, spit-out observation, “It’s funny how I need you, damn / It’s perfect when I leave you, damn.” 

These twists and turns mimic life’s own trajectory. I said at the start that I was taking more action in my own life, and while it has been productive, it’s also quite difficult! For every little victory, there’s a backslide or regression - a moment of frustration with practicing guitar where you wonder if it’s even worth it, an exciting opportunity that disappears almost as quickly as it emerged – but this, too, is part of the process. Great Grandpa understand this all too well as Patience, Moonbeam ends with the single that ushered the band’s return, “Kid.” It’s a power ballad complete with heart-wrenching piano, a soaring guitar solo, and plenty of strings, but it’s the lyrics that drive everything home. Written in the aftermath of the loss of the Goodwins’ first pregnancy, mourning hangs over every inch of scenery, making the mirrored conclusions in each chorus come off as not just sincere, but genuinely life-affirming.

All good things in time define their meaning
And fold sweet ends into their mouths

All dark things in time define their meaning
And fold sharp ends into their mouths

Grief, growth, and change: these are not one-time events, but a constant process that we are always undergoing. We can choose to struggle against the ebb and flow and be lost, or look for patterns and ride the current to safer waters. In Great Grandpa’s case, they were lucky enough to be led back to one another. “Task,” a seemingly autobiographical tale of reunion and cooperation, sums that gift up perfectly. It opens on the line, “Saw you at the party we called you by your new name / You had changed, but the heart of you was still the same,” sweetly and succinctly supporting Menne’s gender transition before getting to the heart of the band’s bond. He sings about several “perfect kind(s) of song” before his bandmates join in for the outro of, “Won’t you tell me what my task is?” Sometimes, a little help from your friends is all you really need.

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Wes Cochran is a Portland-based writer, worker, and music listener. You can find them @ohcompassion on Twitter, via their email electricalmess@gmail.com, or navelgazing their way up and down South Portland.

The Best of Q1 2025

In 2025, I think it’s become clear to pretty much everyone how nefarious the tech industry is. All the major social media platforms are owned by oligarchs, actively pushing narratives that benefit them, silencing dissent, and forcing users into isolated echo chambers of a uniquely hellish making. AI-generated slop has proliferated every corner of the internet, from braindead comment-generating bots and nonsensical recipe introductions to a snowballing quantity of deadening content designed to keep you scrolling forever and ever. Every move is being tracked, reported on, and sent back to some advertiser who’s going to try to squeeze another couple of pennies out of you for a new-and-improved dish soap tailored specifically to you and your ideals. 

In a way, it’s a hell of our own hyper-customized making, but also one we’re utterly helpless to as the current of technology transfers power further and further up. It’s fascinating and frustrating to have watched the internet evolve from this place of wonder and near-limitless potential to an ad-sponsored wasteland where only the rich and the stupid survive. 

To that end, I’ve never found it more important to log off and experience the real world. To touch grass and stare at water, to keep my nose in a book and my head on the positives. When I am logged on, I try my best to seek out things made by real people. I’ve found great comfort and camaraderie in newsletters, music, and the carefully considered creations of friends. It’s never been more important to be intentional about the things you interact with. To question the recommendations of the algorithm and ask, ‘Who is this benefiting?’ because, more often than not, you’ll find that it’s something terrible if you follow that chain for long enough.

Jesus, I didn’t mean for this to be such a bummer. This is all a long and slightly dour way for me to say that I see a great deal of worth in genuine recommendations from real people, and that’s exactly what this round-up offers. Part of me dislikes that I instituted a quarterly cadence for recapping our favorite new releases because it makes me sound like a dumb business bro. Stocks were down in Q1. Feeling bullish on alt-country. Sell all your ownership in shoegaze. That’s just not how music works. The title of this article might seem silly, but honestly, it’s just a way for us to make a case for our favorite releases of the year so far in hopes that you find something new to enjoy. 

Sure, we’re only a few months into 2025, but the dedicated crew of music geeks that make up the Swim Team have found no shortage of records to love. It’s a fast-moving world, and we want to help you keep up by giving you something new and fresh to obsess over. Every Friday, I find about a dozen new records I want to listen to, and I almost never get to them all, but that ever-elusiveness is part of the game. You find a bunch; you love a few. What follows are 18 recommendations from 18 of our writers. That’s 18 records made by real people that are worth your time and effort and money and love. 

Fuck your algorithm, trust your heart. Thanks for being here. 

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Anxious – Bambi

Run For Cover Records

It feels like whenever I’m writing a Swim Into The Sound “Best Of” entry, it’s for some band on Run For Cover. I'm still not sure if Bambi is my favorite record of the year (the new Cloakroom, Spiritbox, and Art d’Ecco are fantastic), but it's certainly the one I've gone back to the most, thanks to its unique blend of indie-rock and emo inspirations. It's hilarious to listen to this mostly melodic record and think about how, just five years ago, I was watching Anxious open for Knuckle Puck and had to actively avoid stage divers and crowd killers. That's not to say you won't find those in 2025, but with songs like “Some Girls” and my personal favorite, “Jacy,” in a tracklist like this, nestled alongside “Head & Spine,” you get the best of all worlds. This is the sound of a band maturing, and not in a bad way.

– Samuel Leon

Caroline Rose – year of the slug

Self-released

When I think of Caroline Rose, I picture the cover of LONER, which depicts a vacant-eyed Rose staring off into the middle distance with a mouth crammed full of cigarettes like that one file photo of Homer Simpson. That album was one of the best releases of 2018: a red-washed indie rock release packed with wildly inventive songs, fun music videos, and an excess of personality. I liked 2020’s Superstar a fair bit, but by the time The Art of Forgetting came out in 2023, it felt like something had been lost in the equation. 

year of the slug scales things back in the most wondrous way, reminiscent of that free-ranging invention I first fell in love with back in 2018, even though it sounds much different. Self-recorded entirely through Garageband on their phone, most of these songs are sparse and simple, featuring only guitar, vocals, and Rose’s uncanny knack for uncovering a melody. There’s some ornamentation: the occasional multi-tracked vocal, drum loop, or piano dirge, but in comparison to Rose’s previous albums, everything is paired back in a way that’s striking and remarkably catchy. 

When announcing the album, Caroline Rose posted something of a mission statement, outlining their desire to live life more slug-like. Through these constraints: self-recording, self-releasing, avoiding streaming services, exclusively touring independent venues, and pairing things back to the absolute bare minimum, Rose has created an immaculate and inspirational collection of songs that stand on their own as a testament to pure, artistic creativity. Thank you, Uncle Carol.

– Taylor Grimes

Cloakroom – Last Leg of the Human Table

Closed Casket Activities

When our editor put out the call for Swim’s Q1 roundup, I ran to claim Cloakroom’s Last Leg of the Human Table as fast as my fingers could type. This moving, variegated album has had me and my colleagues buzzing since its release – its vast emotional depth and intensely satisfying density have proven that Cloakroom just keeps getting better. The opening track, “The Pilot,” is a soaring and spacey anthem that I unabashedly claim as my favorite off of the album. Heavy without being overwhelming or cluttered, I’m calling it now as the song of the summer. Though Last Leg of the Human Table stays true to the band’s shoegaze-y, self-described “stoner emo” sound, the album also proves Cloakroom’s range with the thoughtfully strummed “Bad Larry” and the wistful interlude “On Joy and Undeserving.” When I need a hit of pure dopamine, I’ll be cranking Cloakroom at max volume with the windows down.

– Britta Joseph

Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe

Virgin Music Group

When it’s a Coheed and Cambria release year, I tend to make the joke that no other album stands a chance. This is mostly because Coheed has been my favorite band for well over the last decade, and that’s just the expectation at this point, but there is always the fear in the back of my mind that this will be the album of theirs that doesn’t resonate for me. Fortunately, this is not the case with the band’s (somehow) eleventh studio album and the third act of the Vaxis saga, in which Coheed comes back stronger than ever, delivering possibly my favorite of the three. The hints were all there, but realizing this was secretly a third Afterman record not only satisfied the part of me that loves referential themes but produced some of my new favorite Coheed experiences like this album’s acoustic slow burn “Corner My Confidence.” The Father of Make Believe reminds me exactly what I adore about this band, specifically in bringing back their epic, album-ending suites, as well as continuing to lock in their tried and true formulas, arresting rhythm section, and grandiose, operatic sequencing. Despite alluding to the eventual ending of the band in their new pop ballad “Goodbye, Sunshine,” I truly hope Coheed continues to produce these kickass, sci-fi epics for as long as possible. 

– Ciara Rhiannon 

Denison Witmer – Anything At All

Asthmatic Kitty

I really hope Denison Witmer finally gets his flowers. Witmer’s been making thoughtful and contemplative folk songs for almost 30 years, and I’ve been a fan for almost 20. I saw him play the student center at my Christian college in the year of our Lord 2005; he played simple solo folk songs about sleeping, dreaming, and longing, and I was never the same. 

Anything At All was recorded and produced by Witmer’s longtime friend and collaborator, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan is only credited as a featured artist on two of the ten songs, but his voice and musical fingerprints are everywhere. Witmer’s writing seems to focus mostly on the intersection of the mundane and the divine: trying to be a good dad and husband, working in the garden, planting trees, dealing with self-doubt, questioning what sort of life we’re living and what sort of legacy we’re leaving, reconciling the smallness and the existential largeness of middle-aged domestic life. Maybe it’s the fact that I turn 40 this year, but honestly, these are the sort of songs my soul longs for. It’s good shit! If you like Anything At All, check out 2020’s American Foursquare and 2005’s Are You A Dreamer?

– Ben Sooy

Fust – Big Ugly

Dear Life Records

In a world full of new artists that you NEED to know about, the simple solution to the glut is to look to North Carolinian photographer and musician Charlie Boss, who seems to be best friends with some of the most important musicians of our day. Charlie’s work introduced me to the Durham, NC band Fust, and for that, I am forever thankful.

I only moved to the South three years ago, but gah-lee, if Fust’s Big Ugly don't make me feel like I was born with a Mountain Dew in each hand. Aaron Dowdy’s writing about the South spoke to a newcomer like me in ways that caught me off guard. Big Ugly guides me down through kudzu-covered hollers and helps to remind me just how beautiful it is down here. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about “Spangled,” the lead single and lead track of the album, which takes you soaring down dotted highway lines and over dilapidated buildings, all while the structure of the song itself steadily turns into an Appalachian free association. Big Ugly goes on to oscillate between Springsteen-style power ballads and sharp songs of yearning. It is an album of beauty, humor, and truth-telling. If I could have any superpower, it might be to have whatever Fust band leader Aaron Dowdy has. It might just be better than flying.

– Kirby Kluth

Jaye Jayle – After Alter

Pelagic Records

Evan Patterson is already underway ruling my first quarter listens in 2025, most recently with Power Sucker, the new Young Widows album and the band’s first in eleven years. On top of that, there’s After Alter, the latest offering from his solo project Jaye Jayle, which kicked off the year with a thunderous punch back in January. It’s a heavy and dynamic release that continues Patterson’s tradition of recontextualizing sludge metal into the singer/songwriter realm, channeling the more intimate moments of artists like Nick Cave, Neurosis, and Swans. The rhythmic drones of tracks like “Father Fiction” and “Doctor Green” are emotional and entrancing, dark ballads for doomful druids. After Alter’s final moments are introduced with a seven-minute rendition of The Beatles’ “Help!” done in a way only Jaye Jayle can do and doesn’t sound out of place with the rest of the record at all. It’s one of Patterson’s finest works to date in an already prolific catalog worth celebrating.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Men I Trust – Equus Asinus 

Self-released

I think a lot about how Christopher Nolan had Clémence Poésy, who appears in one sequence of Tenet to “explain” the time-bending mechanisms of the sci-fi spy masterpiece, tell the Protagonist and audience: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” Tenet is a vibes movie, one to ride with and luxuriate in, one to let the craft wash over you and feel it rip you away.

Men I Trust’s albums are vibes records. They lure you in with sultry, lounging grooves, but on Equus Asinus, the songs are full of aching. Aching to feel like you did before, aching to return. These aren’t the sweet dreams that earned dream-pop its genre tag; these are the dreams of Twin Peaks. So close to being reality, but with one glaring, off-kilter element that knocks you off balance. It’s in the warm creak of the piano on the closer, “What Matters Most.” In “All My Candles” questions of what our time even amounts to. In the mud, we come with and come from. In the melodramatic instrumental on “Paul’s Theme,” which would fit perfectly over Shinji psychically breaking in the back half of Neon Genesis Evangelion. One set of lyrics repeatedly asks in French: “Little man, what do you want?”

You feel it too, don’t you?

– Lillian Weber

Midcard – Sick

Self-released

Growing up in a no-stoplight town in Montana, my world was saturated with the podunk culture of rural life in the American West, so I denounced country music on principle, opting for my version of things that felt rebellious (pop-punk, metalcore, screamo, etc.). It’s only been in the past several years that I’ve had a redemptive journey with twangy music by way of country-tinged emo rock, and Midcard from Austin, TX, is one of my favorite bands doing it. I’ve been a fan since “BMI” made me cry real tears in 2023, and this new EP is my favorite thing they’ve done. The southernness is apparent, but there’s not even a hint of affectation in these indie punk songs that land somewhere between the last couple Hotelier records, early Manchester Orchestra, and 90’s alt-rock in the vein of Everclear. What hits especially hard for me are the lyrics, tender and pissed off in equal measure, often flirting with cynicism, with plenty of wit and passion to cut the acid. There are gang vocals, tappy emo riffs, dudes yelling, “Woo!” before guitar solos, panic chords, an all-time great diss about “very publicly misunderstand[ing] The Catcher in the Rye,” and none of it feels anything less than earnest. Rock music.

– Nick Webber

Oldstar – Of the Highway

Self-Released

Back in February, Oldstar’s Zane McLaughlin posted on the band’s blog about recording Of the Highway and said, “Oldstar went Hi-Fi, is what the critics will say, all three of them.” Well, I’m a critic, and I am here to say they went Hi-Fi, and it’s fantastic. 

Even with a full band, a new home in New York City, and a real-deal recording studio, the melancholia of Florida’s Oldstar still weaves through the album. The band deals in lyrical storytelling, with McLaughlin recalling conversations or tall tales, all over songs that lean into a country twang (“Wake Me”), alt-rock fuzz (“Nail”), or blend both seamlessly (“Alabama”). Oldstar is a band that I wanted to make a huge album, and I am so happy they did. It’s getting warm again, so go find a chair outside, crack a beer, watch the sunset, and listen to this. 

– Caro Alt

Pink Must – Pink Must

15 Love

Pink Must, the collaboration between Mario Rubio, aka more eaze, and Lynn Avery, two of the most delightfully eclectic musicians in American experimental music, is straightforward. Well, in a way. What started as a process of sending demos back and forth, trying to make a grunge album, eventually clicked into place once both relocated to New York City. Two specialists in pulled-and-stretched compositions united to craft an album of AutoTuned alt-rock songs. What sets Pink Must apart from potential pastiche is total commitment and earnestness. Exploratory tendencies aren’t sanded down; they are poured into the space permeating these songs, surrounding warbled poetry, guitar riffs, and mirage-like full band grooves (everything was recorded and performed by Rubio and Avery). Six-minute lead single “Himbo” unfolds into ambiance and guitar strums, only slightly hinting at its creators’ oeuvres. Pink Must is one of the year’s best rock albums, inverting tropes, sounds, and expectations and making something special, making something unique.

– Aly Eleanor

Pyre – This Is How We Lose Fullness

Self-Released

I, like many of us, have been waiting for the album of 2025 that feels like it will help me soundtrack all this absurdity. Cloakroom certainly has done a great job, but when I finished my first listen of This Is How We Lose Fullness, a very frantic energy that had been pinging around my bones and muscle finally seemed to have dissipated through and out of me like Hawking radiation, but for bad vibes. Pyre’s potent blend of screamo, hardcore, and emo mechanics create an invisible latticework of gyres and pulleys, riffs seizing guitars, vocals drawn to bass thrums, drums propelling gang vocals like a moonshot. Force as we know it and (barely) understand it exists in This Is How We Lose Fullness; its inexorable pull, push, and grasp all feel so physically present that you’d think the album was actually shaking you. From the vile clarion call of the album opener to its final quieting death rattle, Pyre have nailed the feeling of our current doomscrolling existence while you urgently battle your growing need to claw at your face from the madness of it all. But hey, you know what they say: A body for the pyre, pile it on and get on with it.

– Elias Amini

Rose Gray – Louder, Please

Play It Again Sam

This one’s for all my fellow pop princesses out there. My brats, my partygirls, my club rats. Lovers of all things Charli XCX and Tove Lo. 

Rose Gray’s Louder, Please honestly had me at the album cover – something about the harsh lighting, the face-melting scream on Gray’s face, the beach, the red hair. She charmed me even before the first song. I was then pleasantly surprised to see that the image on the cover completely matched the vibes of the music upon hearing the thumping club banger opener “Damn.” The East Londoner (and Harris Dickinson’s long-term girlfriend? Okay queen, go off) channeled her underground rave roots throughout her sophomore album, mixing EDM and dance-pop with anthemic hooks to create a record that feels like one big, whirlwind night out. B-side sleeper “Everything Changes (But I Won’t)” is already primed to be my top song of the year. Gray’s vocals are the perfect mix of detached and all-consuming, making her songs that much more enticing. And she was certainly citing her sources: songwriting credits include the guitarist for Cobra Starship, Ryland Blackinton, on “Angel of Satisfaction” and synth-pop “Pop the Glock” queen Uffie on “Just Two.” The season change makes this the perfect album to add to your hot summer rooftop pregame playlist.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Saba and No I.D. – From the Private Collection of Saba and No I.D.

From the Private Collection, LLP

I’ve listened to many great albums this year, but none had me running it back over and over and over again like this one; I probably listened through the full thing about six times the day that it dropped. When people talk about No I.D. these days, a lot of focus is put on the way he’s mentored and influenced other artists, and though that is a huge part of his legacy, I feel like more needs to be said about the fact that he’s still one of the best producers in the game. The beats on this record wrap themselves around you; you can live in them, and they stand up alongside almost anything else in his impressive body of work. Pair that up with Saba, one of Chicago’s greatest storytellers, laying down some of his best verses since Care for Me, and the result is just a beautiful record. The features are all great too, particularly MFnMelo on “Westside Bound Pt. 4,” an absolute gem of a track. I know that I mostly write about emo music, and the people reading this are probably primarily emo listeners, but even if rap isn’t something you listen to regularly, I’d implore you to check this one out (that goes double if you’re from or live in Chicago). Anytime two titans like this link up, it’s a blessing, and though it’s still early, it’s tough for me to imagine anything else coming this year that can top this one. So happy that we have this.   

– Josh Ejnes 

Tobacco City – Horses

Scissor Tail Records

Chicago’s Tobacco City is alt-country in look alone, with mustaches, rattails, and arms full of tattoos, but when the music starts, they deliver pure Conway and Loretta. They are as swingin’-doors a saloon band as Merle Haggard’s Strangers. There’s nothing really “alt” about it; their country sound is authentic and captivating, and their melodies and instrumentation are as unique as they are antique. Horses, their second LP, is more distilled country than their first, and the band has built on that original sound. The songs are airtight, and the lyrics are true 21st-century Americana—strip malls, late-night diners, and struggle. The heroes of the album, without question, are the dual harmonies of bandleader Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, as well as the pedal steel stylings of Andy “Red” PK. Coleslaw has a classically deadpan-style country voice, like Waylon Jennings or Jay Farrar. Goddard’s heavenly voice laces and loops around like Emmylou Harris or Miranda Lambert. When their voices meet in harmony, they reach a truly ethereal plane. Red lays down pedal steel somewhere between Jerry Garcia on Workingman’s Dead and Lloyd Maines on Anodyne—and he joins Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis as a titan of the Pedal Steel Moment.

– Caleb Doyle

The Tubs – Cotton Crown

Trouble In Mind Records

The best export to come out of Wales since Gareth Bale, jangle pop quartet The Tubs have created an album that has already made a permanent home in my rotation for 2025 and further. The songs are packed to the brim with energetic, uptempo guitar strokes to circumvent the melancholy, glum lyrics of vocalist Owen Williams. Williams’ deep, love-scorned voice is a soothing siren that comforts you while he spills his guts out about lost relationships and the tragic, untimely death of his mother. Cotton Crown is a fascinating case study in successfully masking the deeply personal lyrics of Williams that oftentimes venture into darkness with a bright, sunny disposition of music. “Narcissist” and “Strange” will have you feeling like Otto Rocket while surfing on nonstop waves of jangle pop guitar strings. Cotton Crown doesn’t possess a dull moment in its brief twenty-nine-minute runtime. The Tubs have the energy of a spiked Celsius drink with the passion of a grief-stricken poet, making this an instant favorite of mine. 

– David Williams

wakelee – Doghouse

Self-released

Brooklyn indie-emo trio wakelee appeared to me in a particularly ferocious doomscrolling session on TikTok. The band’s video snuck in a substantial three seconds of screentime before I swiped up to feed my ever-insatiable brain rot. However, in those three seconds, the unit introduced some of my favorite music of the year thus far. Doghouse, released on February 7th, is the band at their most confident and commanding.

Ironically, the song that piqued my interest during that fateful doomscrolling bout was track one, “mildlyinteresting.” Starting inquisitively with a hazy arpeggio, the jarring, fat guitar chords kick in before the captivating opening verse strikes. The track explicates vocalist/guitarist Alex Bulmer’s (and clearly my) noxious dependence on being online. The song will not only have you returning for an ungodly amount of repeat listens but also dwelling on all the times you shut the blinds and sought strangers’ advice on Quora. 

Equally as catchy but largely less upbeat is the ensuing track, “Bangkok.” Following the same arpeggiated intro as the initial track, it’s here that wakelee takes a much more reclusive and introspective route. Driven by melancholic vocals and guitar melodies, the track paints pictures of leaving relationships with wounds. Hemorrhaging and haunting, Bulmer musters, “It’s not fair, I wish that you could be here.” The rest of the EP is just as fantastic – from more delicate, pensive tracks like “Doghouse” to the alt-rock-dunked anthem, “Gary’s Outcome.” Combining aspects of acts like Remo Drive, Pinegrove, and oso oso, wakelee’s Doghouse is required listening in 2025.

– Brandon Cortez

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds

AD 93

It’s rare to find a new release that genuinely opens your mind, expanding possibilities of what’s viable within a genre, but YHWH Nailgun do just that on 45 Pounds. Between Sam Pickard’s frantic drumming and Zach Borzone’s delivery that falls in a liminal space between whimpers, grunts, and screams, the rest of the band is left to inject whatever jagged pieces of melody they can. The result is 20 minutes of some of the strangest punk music I’ve heard in my life. Guitars and synthesized noise echo in response to each hollow drum fill, like sheet metal crumpling in response to the hits of a hammer. The individual components sound mechanical, but together, they twitch in ways that feel disturbingly lifelike. As Borzone sputters out seemingly every fear, delusion, or revelation that crosses his mind, a soul makes itself known. Is it pretty? Almost never. Do I dare look away? Not on your life.

– Wes Cochran