For now, Florence Road wear their influences on their sleeves, but few rising acts did so as proudly and confidently as the Irish quartet on their debut release, “Fall Back”. The EP opens with their poppiest song, ‘Break the Girl’, which is straight out of the Olivia Rodrigo playbook – and the band opened for Rodrigo this year. Rodrigo’s producer, Dan Nigro, is one of a few big-ticket producers who contributed to the EP, co-producing the wistfully lush ‘Caterpillar’. That one remind you of Phoebe Bridgers? That’s her collaborator Marshall Vore in the credits of the theatrical closer ‘Heavy’.
But none of those facts are as remarkable as Florence Road’s fine-tuned emotionality, which makes them sound like they’ve been doing it for as long as any of their inspirations. But at their most spiteful, on the breakup anthem ‘Goodnight’, Lily Aron lets the goofiness slip, and you hope this kind of youthful charm never eludes them.
We are devoted Wishy fans—and rightfully so. One of our favourite Indiana band has had a momentous 2-year run: releasing two EPs in 2023, “Mana” and “Paradise“, and following it up last year with their debut album “Triple Seven”, a record that found spots on both our best albums and best debut albums lists for 2024. On top of that, the band was featured as part of our Best of What’s New last August. All of this is to say: if you’re new around here, go give Wishy a listen. They’ve already shared their third EP, “Planet Popstar“—a buoyant fever dream of indie-pop nostalgia plucked straight out of the aughts. The guitars on “Over and Over” are an instant earworm, anchored throughout the track by Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites’ near weightless vocals.
Meanwhile, the snare heavy rhythms and steady, flowing groove brings to mind (or my mind, at least) the effortless cool of early Yo La Tengo. Since “Mana”, Wishy have matured at an amazing rate. They’re still pulling on the same threads of longing and self-reflection and gazing down at the same guitar pedals, but the music is different—arriving both more refined and intentional in every foggy lyric and fuzzy riff.
“Planet Popstar” Though these six songs are technically B-sides that didn’t make Wishy’s debut LP “Triple Seven”, a couple more and they’d have a compelling full-length follow-up in their hands. Yet this is a band that excels at and experiments with the EP format, as evidenced by 2023’s “Paradise“, which made our list that year and was compiled with the new one as “Paradise on Planet Popstar” on sky blue vinyl. As the title suggests, Wishy are on top of the world here – or maybe somewhere on the outskirts of it. Spellbound and starry-eyed, the record approaches euphoria with the shakiness of living in the real world, soaring and shimmering but willing to undercut its own sweetness. It’s elevated, most of all, by Nina Pitchkites and Kevin Krauter’s dynamic interplay, which often frames the songs in conversation with each other. “Book a flight to the sun/ ‘Cause I’d rather be burned alive/ If I thought it would catch your eye,” Krauter sings on the title track, while Pitchkites laments, on the bubbly ‘Chaser’, “I’m just another one of your trips around the sun.” For the listener, at least, the ride’s worthwhile.
We lost a lot of bands in 2025, but none offered a means to grieve as cathartic as Porridge Radio. If one word could summarize the band’s music, “catharsis” would be the one – but “The Machine Starts to Sing”, an EP comprising songs recorded during the sessions for last year’s “Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me“, is more subdued in its delivery.
When Dana Margolin started working on the fourth Porridge Radio album, there was something different in how the songwriter approached creativity.
“Almost all the songs started out as poems,” says Margolin of the work that became “Clouds In The SkyThey Will Always Be There For Me” (2024), “I wanted to challenge myself.” In songwriting, Dana argues, she had learnt that the writer can always hide behind the tricks of the music and well-worn techniques such as repetition. “In a poem, though,” says Dana, “you can’t hide.”
Recorded in the Somerset countryside in early 2024 by long time Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, The UK band’s new album is a coming-of-age moment inspired by burnout, the music industry, heartbreak and the brutal collapse of significant relationships and – crucially – Dana’s own increasing immersion in her craft as an artist.
Apart from the six-minute opening title track, the rest of the songs tend to downplay their climactic build ups by relying mostly on acoustic instrumentation. Even the closer ‘I’ve Got a Feeling (Stay Lucky)’, which swells with organic intensity, avoids blown-out distortion. “No need to talk about/ No need to cry about it/ Like dust, it all just blows away,” Dana Margolin sings on ‘Don’t Want to Dance’. Porridge Radio, of course, are the gale-force wind – and the best we can do is keep listening.
“Dancing Shoes” showcases Nilüfer Yanya’s acrobatic instrumental skills and her pull towards exploratory music. While other artists abide by sticky hooks and addictive choruses, Yanya’s appeal lies in her ability to let her songs develop—making each track feel alive as it unfolds and is satisfyingly balanced. “Dancing Shoes” has its fair share of scratchy, industrial embellishments, but Yanya puts herself at the core, so each song has a soft heart and spiky exterior. While the industrial drumming overpowers the songs’ stripped-back core at times, and some shaky synth embellishments lack the confidence to justify their presence, the songs on “Dancing Shoes” are a surprising and lush collection. Each of the four chapters bleeds into new genres and transforms along the way. That’s the beauty of giving your darlings some sitting time: you’re giving them the space to breathe.
Nilüfer Yanya releases her new EP “Dancing Shoes” on Ninja Tune out now.
“Dancing Shoes” was written alongside a collection of tracks that Nilüfer re-approached with her creative partner Wilma Archer when she returned from touring her latest record. The project includes Nilüfer’s latest singles “Where To Look” and “Cold Heart”.
“Chrysalis” by she’s green make the kind of shoegaze that tends to melt into the atmosphere, not quite as noisy or hooky as their recent tourmates in Glixen and Softcult. But on their latest EP “Chrysalis”, they prove there’s real muscle and heart to their Slowdive-coded aesthetic. Zofia Smith’s iridescent voice reaches too many high notes to fade into the background, giving weight to familiar tropes in the genre: ghosts taking on the shape of distorted guitars (‘Graze’), love as a delicate daydream (‘Silhouette’).
she’s green has put me into a transe. The power and ethereal are so complimentary, each song feels like being raptured into an eternal state of bliss. The visceral drumming and pummelling during some of the softer moments suggest it’s often the beautiful dreams that land a punch to the gut. Rather than shrouding them in layers of gauze, she’s green remind us they can’t be buried for too long.
Men I Trust is a Canadian indie band formed in Quebec City, Quebec, in 2014. The band consists of Emmanuelle Proulx (lead vocals, guitar), Jessy Caron (guitar, bass guitar), and Dragos Chiriac (keyboards). The group has self-released all of their music and has released physical editions on the Canadian indie and independent label Return to Analog.
They self describe their music as a blend of “dream pop and indie elements” whereby blending “hypnotic melodies and captivating vocals they have been able to transcend a genre into their own musical space”.
It’s a vibrant moment for indie music aficionados as Men I Trust, the Canadian band known for its dreamy synth- pop sound, has just released their latest album “Equus Asinus”.
The album serves as the first of two interconnected studio releases anticipated throughout the year. The band’s choice of unique album titles—drawing on equine nomenclature—reflects a larger artistic concept. Both albums, “Equus Asinus” (meaning “donkey” in Latin) and the upcoming “Equus Caballus” (meaning “horse”), explore distinct emotional landscapes while showcasing their signature light, jazzy pop sound characterized by baroque touches.
With the new release, fans are not only treated to fresh music but also a wealth of live performances to anticipate this summer, including a highlight appearance at the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. As they prepare to hit the road, Men I Trust continues to generate conversation within the music community about the evolving nature of their artistic expression.
Good Flying Birds is a jangly, noisy guitar-pop group from the Midwest, USA. The project began in December 2023 with a string of 4-track cassette recordings and stop-motion videos uploaded to YouTube under the name “Talulah God,” accompanied by a chaotic, GIF-filled website. Over the next few months, songs were uploaded regularly, eventually catching the attention of influential punk and DIY label head Martin Meyer.
In January 2025, “Talulah’s Tape” was released on Rotten Apple, compiling home recordings from 2020–2024. It showcased a wide-ranging love for independent guitar music, clever songwriting, and a charmingly scrappy, twee-punk aesthetic. The release found immediate underground acclaim, earning radio play and selling 300 cassettes in under a month.
Riding the momentum and building a reputation as a dynamic live act, the group attracted significant label interest, ultimately signing with Carpark and Smoking Room. Those labels will co-release “Talulah’s Tape” on vinyl and streaming in October 2025.
They played their first show in June 2024 as a minimalist three-piece in Indianapolis. By August, with a full lineup and a new name—Good Flying Birds—they launched into a steady run of Midwest and East Coast shows.
They’ve shared stages and basements with like-minded janglers such as Sharp Pins, Answering Machines, Wishy, Pardoner, Horsegirl, and Chronophage, helping spark a renewed flame for scrappy guitar music. Their sound nods to lo-fi icons like Guided By Voices, Beat Happening, DLIMC, Talulah Gosh, and The Vaselines, but carries a singular, earnest charm. It’s the sound of wide-eyed optimism in a cracked world—rosy cheeks, a tambourine in hand, and guitars ringing in all directions.
After years out of print, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s pre-Fleetwood Mac album was finally reissued last week1973’s “Buckingham Nicks” was the lone album released by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks prior to the pair joining Fleetwood Mac. If you haven’t heard it, you’re not alone. It’s never been on streaming or CD and made its most recent appearance on vinyl in the early ’80s.
Fleetwood Mac was a blues band on life support when drummer Mick Fleetwood heard Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s 1973 debut as romantic and creative partners, tying his group’s fate to Nicks’ vocal spell in “Crying in the Night,” the country-blues kicks in Buckingham’s fingerpicking, and the power-ballad finale “Frozen Love.” “Buckingham Nicks” died on arrival, but now sounds, after an eternity in collector purgatory, like it’s always been ready for prime time, a perfectly-cut diamond of early-Seventies songcraft and natural, harmonizing bond. And here’s sweet justice: The reissue debuted in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200.
But that changed with the announcement earlier this summer that Rhino Entertainment would finally be bringing a true lost classic back into the mainstream, freshly remastered on vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming at long last.
Produced by Keith Olsen, Buckingham and Nicks recorded the material for the record at Sound City, working with a strong collective of players including bassist Jerry Scheff, drummer Jim Keltner and future Nicks collaborator Waddy Wachtel. Unlike some early records that sound nothing like the better known material that comes later, it’s easy to hear the magic that the duo would subsequently create with Fleetwood Mac. Songs like album opener “Crying in the Night” and “Don’t Let Me Down Again” fit strongly with the sound they became known for on a larger scale with the Mac.
dig into the archives, and now Nicks has shared a heartfelt letter written to her family during the recording of the album.
Writing on Instagram, Nicks wrote, “I wanted to share this letter I wrote to my family while Lindsey and I were making Buckingham Nicks. My mom saved it and it’s been in a drawer for over 50 years.”
At the time, the duo were still waiting for their big break and Nicks writes with the excitement and humour of someone who thinks it might just be round the corner. “Here I am,” she begins in the letter, addressed to her parents and brother Chris, “once again at the “famous” Sound City Recording Studio. I am getting very tired of sitting around listening to 12 hours of music per day. Oh well, I know it will pay off in the end, and when I am sitting in my small but tasteful pool that is totally secluded, where I can sun in the nude and tan my entire fat body whilst waiting for my plastic surgery leg left – it will all be worth it.”
After comically debating on how the family should celebrate her impending 25th birthday (“I have decided that we should set aside the entire month of May”), her thoughts to turn to the record and she mentions that the song that would eventually be titled “Don’t Treat Me Like A Stranger” is coming together particularly well. “By the way – Dad and Chris – that rock and roll tune that you both like (“Baby Baby, don’t treat me so bad”) with the fancy guitar work is almost finished and Lindsey may go down in history as one of “greats” in guitar playing. It really is amazing.”
Signing off, she implores them to “hold good thoughts about this thing”. The album certainly paid off, just not in the way that Nicks imagined at the time. “Buckingham Nicks” made next to no impact until, on a tour of the studio, Mick Fleetwood heard it playing by accident and the path to the duo joining his band was set. The rest is history – soon enough, Nicks would be one of music’s biggest stars and that luxurious Beverly Hills pad she’d dreamed of could become a reality.
Meanwhile, the expansive track “Frozen Love,” which clocks in at over seven minutes is still a stunning moment in the LP’s running order. It’s also the track that reportedly caught Mick Fleetwood’s ear when he heard Olsen playing the album on the studio monitors at Sound City, prompting him to pursue getting Buckingham and Nicks into Fleetwood Mac. Listening to “Frozen Love” again decades later, the drummer provided an apt summary on social media that fits the album as a whole. “Magic then, magic now.”
Minneapolis punk trio Husker Du had a incredible year in 1985, releasing two of their best albums, which then led to a major-label deal. “1985: The Miracle Year” centers on a hometown gig from January featuring soon-to-be classics “I Apologize” and “Makes No Sense at All” and covers of “Eight Miles High” and “Ticket to Ride.” Select songs from other 1985 shows round out these exemplary performances by a band that exited too soon.
Perhaps because they were surrounded by bands that were more formally daring (Sonic Youth, Mission of Burma, Big Black), Hüsker Dü has sometimes taken back seat in the 1980s u-ground rock mythology. Of course, this really depends on an individual’s perspective, as the trio’s discography remains a foundational text in how to lay down the hardcore-era punk scorch with non-trite melodicism while being instrumentally limber (in the manner of the great rock trios).
Directly related to Hüsker’s formal achievement is the high number of subsequent bands that directly swiped their sound. By comparison, far fewer aped Sonic Youth or Minutemen or Big Black. And so, it was also easy to get fatigued by the sheer impact Hüsker Dü had on the scene. Yes, it was all a long time ago, but hierarchies can become codified over time. Packed from start to finish with blazing performances, “1885: The Miracle Year” is a glorious perspective corrector, particularly for anybody who tuned out after “Zen Arcade”.
The Minnesota speed demons were in roaring form and career flux — closing out their indie-punk purism at SST Records, about to sign with Warner Bros. — on these stage dates: a January 1985 rave-up at First Avenue in Minneapolis, plus hot shots from the Hüskers’ touring that fall. Velocity can trump coherence — hardly a problem amid the thrill of it all. But five songs from Salt Lake City are a scalding preview of the pop contours on 1986’s “Candy Apple Grey”, while a hometown-encore streak of Byrds and Beatles covers shows off the Sixties-garage classicism always at the heart of the din.
Stella Donnelly returned with the slow-burning album “Love And Fortune” this year, a tender, and gorgeous record concerned with the parting of a friend. Perhaps the best song is “Year of Trouble”, it’s a moving and heart breaking moment from the Melbourne artist. Accompanied by just an isolated piano, Donnelly’s vocal performance is absolutely gorgeous, laying her heart on the line; her tone is absolutely exquisite, warm and compassionate, yet wistful and longing, as she intimately charts the last days of parting. Donnelly says she “almost turned [the song] into a sad dancefloor moment but decided to keep it real for the feels. Maybe there’ll be a remix one day.”
“Since you closed off to me/ I’ve been on a lonely ride,” she sings with a lump in the throat inducing quiver, one can hear and feel the pain as she reaches for a high note pushing her voice to the edge of break, it’s a stunning vocal performance and one of the best tracks I have heard this year.
Stella Donnelly has returned with a deeply personal and anchored album, a body of work that traces the journey back to herself after a period of profound change. Recorded in Naarm/Melbourne, the album carries the grounding energy of place, offering a sonic landscape that feels both intimate and expansive. Joining Donnelly on the record are longtime collaborators and friends Marcel Tussie, Sophie Ozard, Julia Wallace, Timothy Harvey, and Ellie Mason, whose playing brings a looseness and vitality to the music, holding space for Donnelly’s voice to shine in its most tender and unguarded forms.
The songs on“Love or Fortune” gnawed away at Stella Donnelly; they wouldn’t leave her alone, they had to be written. They distil the sheer depth of her song writing, the recognition that sometimes less is more, the purity of her voice, which can turn tiny moments and subtle shifts in a day into ones that can eventually change a life. It’s also proof that sometimes taking your time can offer rewards. It’s a sterling showcase for her indefinable ability to turn trauma into triumph, the feeling of being lost into finding yourself again, one note at a time.
released November 7th, 2025
Written, composed and performed by Stella Donnelly
The Fat Angel Sings 