The Liverpool indie veterans Echo & The Bunnymen will release what will be their thirteenth studio album via BMG Records on September 18th.
The album, will be the follow-up to 2014’s “Meteorites”, features the late Blondie drummer Clem Burke – who passed away, aged 70, in April 2025 – on 10 of its 11 tracks.
In a statement accompanying the album news, the band say, “The mighty, legendary Clem Burke – longtime friend of Mac [frontman Ian McCulloch] – was integral to the making of the album, and heartbreakingly passed away during its completion… love you Clem X”
As a preview, the release of the record is preceded today, July 16th, by the release of its first single, “Brussels Is Haunted”.
The lyrics to the first verse of the single run:
“Here comes Plastique and Bert Bertrand We danced at The Classic all night long Enchanté Belgique et Le Place Grande We drank Rum and cassis and beer blonde”
Echo & The Bunnymen’s 13th album, “Apples For Isaac”, is set for release in September
Northern California quintet Soft Science returns with “Sand”, their fifth album, due out on Shelflife Records (US) and Spinout Nuggets (UK). Building on the band’s signature blend of dream pop, post-punk, and darkwave, “Sand” feels both intimate and expansive—an album rooted in melody, atmosphere, and emotional depth. Across ten songs, the band balances its established sound with a renewed sense of movement and urgency, creating a record that is immersive, dynamic, and unmistakably Soft Science. Lyrically, “Sand” explores impermanence—how love, memory, and identity shift under pressure—and what it means to keep choosing connection in a world with no guarantees.
Soft Science is comprised of longtime collaborators Katie Haley (lead vocals and percussion), brothers Matt (lead guitar) and Ross Levine (guitar and backing vocals), partners Tony Cale (drums) and Becky Cale (bass and backing vocals), and Hans Munz (atmospheric electronics). With ethereal vocals, twin 12-string guitars, bass, drums, and synthesizers, the band layers luminous melodies, celestial harmonies, and propulsive rhythms into lush, transportive songs. As KEXP has showcased and critics have noted, Soft Science pairs a bright melodic sensibility with a melancholy undertow, creating music that is both immediate and deeply atmospheric.
Earlier Soft Science releases include the LPs “Lines” (2023), Maps (2018), “Detour” (2013), and “Highs and Lows” (2011), along with singles including a split 7” with The Luxembourg Signal (2015), and covers of The House of Love’s ‘I Don’t Know Why I Love You’ and Northern Picture Library’s ‘Paris’ (both 2018). The band’s recordings have earned critical acclaim and led to performances at New York Popfest, Paris Popfest, and The Big Takeover’s 35th Anniversary show, sessions with WFMU, KEXP, and Part-Time Punks, and festivals across the U.S. and the Iberian Peninsula. More recently, the band appeared at Shellraiser and Tremolo Fest in 2024, followed by Dreamgaze PDX in 2025.
With “Sand”, Soft Science continues its sonic evolution, pushing deeper into the noisier edges of dream pop while retaining the band’s gift for hooks, texture, and emotional resonance. As Dagger ‘Zine wrote of the band’s recent work, “Pop hooks bump up against heaving waves of sonic swirl and it all shimmers and shines in all the right places,” a fitting description of a group that keeps expanding its sound without losing its melodic core.
Soft Science’s track “Spinning” from their LP “Sand”.
A sweeping, guitar-driven road trip that recalls and reinvigorates the alt rock and slowcore of the 90s and early aughts, “Mount Zero”, the debut LP from Swapmeet, marks the moment the Australian four-piece come into their own. Following their dreamy 2024 debut EP “Oxalis”, “Mount Zero” arrives on the heels of the band’s signing to LA-based label Winspear, after stirring up buzz throughout Australia, taking home awards for Best Release and Best Song (“Ceiling Fan”) at the South Australian Music Awards and earning the title of ‘Best Emerging Artist’ at SXSW Sydney. Mingling airy sweetness with jagged surrealism, “Mount Zero” transmutes so many of the regrets and uncertainties of young adulthood into a burgeoning, newfound confidence.
Though the members of Swapmeet often begin their songs by writing individually, the tracks on “Mount Zero” ended up circling common themes: first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters. As they’ve done since their earliest days as a band, Swapmeet traded instruments throughout “Mount Zero” and shared production duties as a foursome, developing their sound by layering dozens (sometimes hundreds) of tracks within each song, then carefully removing elements until the production took a clear shape.
The result is a record where Swapmeet bottle up the tooth-gritting intensity of feeling yourself change at the cellular level under reality’s unyielding pressures. It’s a tribute to all the lives that can never be lived, all the paths that will never be followed–and an ode to the one that lies just ahead, too.
releases July 17, 2026
Written, performed, recorded, produced and engineered by Maxwell Elphick, Josh Doherty, VenusO’Broin, Jack Medlyn
It’s the songs. A lot of indie bands these days are filtering ’90s alt-rock inspo through the lens of Alex G-era Bandcamp, but Swapmeet have the tunes to set them apart from the pack. The Adelaide quartet’s 24-year-old members share songwriting duties and often switch instruments, running the gamut from whispery beauty to explosive abrasion without ever losing the identity they’ve honed since first joining forces as teens. After signing with the reliably great Los Angeles indie label Winspear, they’ve spent half a year rolling out their new debut album “Mount Zero”, and each subsequent single has further affirmed their mastery of the form.
“I Know!” is the first track from Swapmeet’s forthcoming album ‘Mount Zero’ out July 17th, 2026 via Winspear.
“Oxalis” is a collection of songs written by Swapmeet over the span of 3 years. The band’s debut EP highlights the emotions of the band as individuals and as a group since forming in early 2021. The five songs delve into feelings of hopelessness, fear, love, content, and grief. “Oxalis” has been an ever-changing assembly of songs whittled down from Swapmeets‘ live set, best representing where the band is currently at and where they started. All songs were recorded and mixed by the members of Swapmeet.
Yumi Zouma are a transatlantic band without borders, with members based in New Zealand, Australia, New York and the UK. They’ve always excelled in bedroom pop that surfs the genres, “NoLove Lost To Kindness” is a band record and their most honest, urgent, varied album yet. Lead single ‘Bashville on the Sugar,’ marked a significant evolution for the band, infusing their signature melodic heart into a new sense of buoyancy and raw glory, with fleet-footed guitar licks and nimble basslines propelling in concert with skittering drum beats, and led by a thrilling melodic forward motion. It finds them balancing urgency and melody in a track shaped by movement—both literal and emotional.
Weaving in MTA field recordings to reflect the pulse of public transport. ‘Blister‘ finds the band throwing off the introspective sound of previous releases and channelling raw energy and embracing reckless abandon, embracing a sound inspired by ‘Song 2′, ”Connection’, ‘Kool Thing’. “Why you gotta do me like that?!” sings Christine Simpson in a moment of do not f#ck with me attitude, as she scratches at a painful patch of skin, yet it’s smothered in utterly catchy refrains, giant chiming riffs and bouncing along on shuddering cymbal crashes.
‘While the album marks a rockier direction in large portions, there are still dreamy bedroom pop moments that hint at their previous work; the ambient and intoxicating ” Chicago 2am’ offers that variation, whilst the ironically titled’95’ has the wistful pulse and cinematic backdrops of 70s or 80s FM music, a muted moment more akin to something you might find on a film soundtrack.
‘Drag’ finds Yumi Zouma stepping into even heavier sonic territory. The track layers grunge-inspired guitars, industrial synth textures, and glitching arpeggios over a slow-building structure that erupts into a massive, cathartic chorus. Beneath the haze, choirs lurk under distortion, heightening the cinematic drama. Lyrically, the song traces frontwoman Christie Simpson’s journey of self-discovery following an ADHD diagnosis, balancing grief for lost time with the relief of acceptance. The result is both a farewell to struggle and a bold embrace of a new chapter.
There’s a special kind of magic that happens when a songwriter who has spent years midwifing other artists’ visions finally turns their focus on themselves. LA lyricist Morgan Nagler’s fingerprints grace everything from Phoebe Bridgers‘ Grammy-nominated ‘Kyoto’ to collaborations with Kim Deal, HAIM, and Margo Price. Now, she steps out from the writing room with a debut solo album, “I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It”, ready to put her own name up there with all those she’s previously worked with.“Your happiness is a cloud / You can see it, but it don’t land,” she sings on ‘Cradle the Pain’, encapsulating that tightrope walk between optimism and melancholy. Its opening salvo of fuzzed-out guitars and slacker hooks quickly establishes Nagler’s capacity for wrapping up existential dread in flooringly seductive melodies.
From there, the album is deliberately varied while giving clues to all the influences she’s had elsewhere. It ping-pongs between the country stomp of ‘Grassoline’ (a spin drift ode to cannabis that could sit comfortably on a Margo Price record) and the stark vulnerability of closer ‘Heartbreak City,’ where Nagler’s voice, sweet and plaintive, navigates a landscape of broken dreams, ice cube beds and candle wax sunlight: “I’m not scared of dying, just living my worst fears.” .What’s truly remarkable about “I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It” is how it synthesises two decades of creative experience into something that feels utterly fresh and inspirational. Nagler’s years in the trenches of DIY music, fronting Whispertown and Supermoon, financing her own tours, and dealing with the grind of the industry give a genuine sense of lightness and perspective that elevates these songs beyond the cathartic.
On ‘Hurt,’ she says it plainly and with disarming directness: “You don’t know love if you don’t know hurt.”“Mine is the story of somebody who decided to never stop,” Nagler says.
“I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It”is proof that that kind of persistence pays off. Equal parts breakup record, existential reckoning, and late-blooming coming-of-age story, Nagler balances melancholy with wit, turning life’s chaos into surprisingly warm and playful indie rock.
The title Little Miss Sunshine of Eaves Wilder’s debut album is a nod to the contradictions at the heart of her work. At the same time, her previous songs touched on dreamy and riot grrrl influences, but she refuses to be boxed in on her awesome first record. Co-produced with Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine, The Killers, The Horrors, Black Country, New Road, Sorry) across the album, she embodies a “bigness” that subverts her sometimes “sweet” persona; this isn’t about commercial scale but emotional and elemental magnitude and song writing vision. A bigger, bolder sound, but also music and words that would make her feeltectonic – like a hurricane, a mountain, or the sun.
Wilder’s voice is like a storm cloud, emotive yet heavy and ethereal all at once. Powerful lead single ‘Hurricane Girl’ – was a storm-lit statement of intent that opens a window to Wilder’s expansive new world. Building from acoustic strums layered with Wilder’s intimate vocals embodying sweetness and strength, into a swaggering rock chorus inspired by early Pearl Jam that’s bristling with confidence, chunky guitar hooks and bursting into a cathartic chorus.
‘Everybody Talks’, finds Eaves at her most confessional, unapologetic, and witty, growing from a doleful, intimate and vivid depiction of being overwhelmed by the noise of live music and the audience, into a crushing crescendo of widescreen guitars that are laced with echoes of the likes of Slowdive, and an earworm-as-repeated refrain screamed to the heavens in frustration.
Both intensely personal and yet universal, it’s a sonic assault on the senses that mirrors the trauma and intrusion Wilder feels from sensory overload. ‘The Great Plains’ is a country flecked cracker with big-hearted choruses that yearns for escape. She may be full of sunshine at times, but she is full of contradictions and frustrations too, it’s natural for a young woman and artist existing in a chaotic world to harness them, carve them into her art, sounding fully in her own power.
Howling Bells return with their first new album in over a decade. The Australian trio’s version of hypnotic indie-rock always stood separate from the pack and very much a reflection of their unbreakable union. Equal parts sepia-toned romance and gritty rock’n’roll thrills. Together with long term collaborator Ben Hillier, in the producer’s chair
Howling Bells release“Strange Life”, their first album in over 12 years, on the 13th February 2026 via Nude Records. They have shared the album track ‘Chimera’, laced with evocative synth motifs, glimmering riffs, and the elegant vocals of Juanita Stein. It’s dipped in yearning that details the lows, before sailing into a swelling, airy 80s-echoing chorus that bristles with hope despite the struggle.
Juanita explains:“Chimera” is a strange word. It means a few different and curious things; in this context, however, I’m using it to mean something of an absurd nature, unattainable, a fantasy. Such is the relationship we have with music at times. This song speaks to my experience as a musician, surviving the perpetual ups and downs of the game. But if you’re lucky enough, you have someone who can cut through the noise and help you realise that the fantasy is half the joy. That the longing is part of the journey and that our achievements along the way are deeply meaningful. At its core, ‘Chimera’ is a song about hope and relinquishing control”.
Howling Bells have announced a series of UK in-store shows in February, followed by a headline UK tour in March and April.
‘Strange Life’ is an album that harnesses the unique musical perspective that pricked up the music world’s ears back in their beginnings, but transposes it onto a lifetime’s more experience, ‘Strange Life’ is both familiar and new; a record that will unfurl like an old friend to long term fans whilst speaking in a language that only hard-won experience and a few more trips around the sun can understand. It may be a ‘Strange Life’ and a weird old world, but it sounds better with Howling Bells back in it.
LIFE are an alternative band from Hull: a creative, tightly connected four-piece who remain proudly independent and driven by a strong DIY ethos rooted in community.
One of Hull’s finest bands, LIFE are back with album number four, following on from the highly critically acclaimed joy of 2022’s “North East Coastal Town”, which saw their eclectically sharp guitar-laden music blossom into a bouquet of emotional pop, with a leap of maturity from records one and two. “Abstract/Natural” leans into this emotion even further, beginning with the pair of recent singles launching the album, the simple, insanely catchy ‘Wild Grasses‘ and the purposeful conviction of ‘The Dollywaggon‘, their knack of never doing the same thing twice on show in this pair, the latter seeing singer Mez spitting out what seems to be a string of consciousness, before the juddering guitars become more harmonious and the restlessness of the chorus line “I never wanted to leave myself, but I’m leaving now” becomes more urgent. ‘Drinking Games‘ perfectly encapsulates the two eras of the band, its slow-burning beginning exploding into a fireball of indie pop, the drums and guitars doing all the heavy lifting.
The merry shout-along of ‘Buried Giant‘, has Mez doing his best Mark E. Smith snarl, before the righteous gloom of ‘Morning Fog‘ brings down the curtain on an eclectically satisfying three quarters of an hour, an experience you will want to then enjoy again and again. It’s a body of work that feels both atmospheric whilst remaining intimate, a real experimental step forward that should sound fantastic live, a band at the height of their powers, and hopefully this record will see them attract a bigger audience to their output. They say life gets in the way, you should make sure that nothing gets in the way of exploring LIFE.
As its title suggests, the record fuses the abstract with the organic, weaving lyrics steeped in folklore, myth, geography, place and time. These elements converge into universal themes of escapism and journey, creating a vivid world in which the band broaden their creative lens. The result is a bold step forward, experimental and story-rich yet still charged with LIFE’s unmistakable dynamism. The album captures a band writing for themselves and for the community that forged them.
LIFE’s fourth album, blending abstract storytelling with organic, nature-inspired themes, released on 19 June 2026.
Bristol psych-rock outfit Dreamwave release a double E.P. featuring Drifter and Moon Dogs, marking the next step in their collaboration with Stolen Body Records. The release follows a run of major live moments, including supporting Frankie and The Witch Fingers at The Garage, standout festival appearances at Wild Paths and Down Stokes, and three packed-out sets at Left of the Dial, including highlight performances at De Doelen and V11 in Rotterdam. Sharing stages with Wine Lips and The Bug Club, Dreamwave have quickly become one of the most exciting and fast-rising live acts in the UK psych scene. Two EPs, one essential 12″—”Drifter” on one side, “Moon Dogs” on the flip.
Dreamwave’s new album, technically their debut recording, brings together their two EPS – “Moon Dogs” and “Drifter”, and the two releases actually segue rather well into each other, so it does actually stand up as a singular work in its own merit. “Drifter”, which makes up the second part of the record, begins thunderously with the brilliant ‘Moon Buggy’ and it’s so psychedelic,
Not for nothing is it called ‘Moon Buggy‘ I guess. Not only that, but the guitar riffery is something that Tony Iommi would have been proud of in his early seventies Black Sabbath meanderings, while ‘Web Weaver‘ feels like the band have taken you even further into space. This one has a melody that is more akin to The Specials‘ classic ‘Do The Dog‘, but totally psyched out to the point of not really being recognisable as such.
‘Space Debris‘ is more comparable to the more creative side of Blur, particularly around the period of Modern Life Is Rubbish, before ‘Murmurs On The Dunes‘ unleashes its brutal assault on your ears. The noisy fuzz of the guitars here have their roots in My Bloody Valentine‘s Lovelesswithout actually sounding anything like them, or it, but you definitely get a similar kind of feeling.
‘Over You‘ really does sound like BRMC though. Not a bad thing though – it’s brash and exciting and they incorporate some late sixties psych-rock into proceedings too, so they do make this sound their own, in the best way possible.he tracks from the “Moon Dogs” EP, which are almost as great, with the sound of Glam Rock pulsing through ‘Polystyrene Irene‘ and the unexpectedly commercial ‘Seeking To Remain‘ This song is as catchy as the latter single was and more, and ‘Wide Shooter‘ is like a wild cross between Devo, Sparks and Boney M‘s ‘Ma Baker‘! This is a wonderfully unpredictable, absolute blast of an album. They ought to be huge.
The Fat Angel Sings 