Garage Rock

New album: Dead Stilettos || Bodge Job

Mancunian chaos built for sticky floors and blown speakers

By / / Garage Rock, Punk / Leave a Comment

Just look at the cover art and album title, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of ​​what to expect from the debut full-length from Manchester five-piece Dead Stilettos. Bodge Job feels like a bar fight between swaggering garage rock, facetious egg punk, and sleazy post-punk. The nine tracks are scrappy and smart, loud and wild, and packed with enough humor and adrenaline to rattle your speakers and your nervous system in equal measure. Built on fuzzed-out riffs, wiry synths, restless rhythms, and the kind of self-assured, sneering delivery that feels uniquely British, the band sounds like the most fun you could have in a sweaty basement.



Bodge Job is out digitally and on vinyl LP through Sour Grapes Records. Featuring Jack Preston, Ollie Martin, Brad Smith, Lucas Tams, and Gareth Allatt.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: S.U.G.A.R || III

Alien Snatch strikes again with another filthy winner

By / / Garage Rock, Punk / Leave a Comment

In the Alien Snatch universe, releasing killer garage punk records almost feels less like a career move and more like a law of nature. Cause and effect get blurry over there. Are you already a cool band with a dangerous new greasy/sleazy/filthy batch of songs? Alien Snatch will probably sniff you out eventually. Or maybe it works the other way around: once you land on the label, it suddenly becomes physically impossible to release anything lame. Either way, expectations are not exactly handled delicately in that camp. And if you cannot be bothered naming your records? Fine. Just slap a number on it and move on.

So here is III, the third LP from the Berlin trio, following S.U.G.A.R. (2021), II (2022), and that absolutely combustible split with Blowers last year. If you already liked this band, III is not about to change your mind. But if you somehow slept on them before, this feels like the right entry point. To my ears, this is the sharpest and most fully realized version of S.U.G.A.R. yet.

The swagger is still intact. The sleaze too. But there is something tighter happening underneath the grime this time around. Like the band spent a little more time sharpening the blades before swinging them around. Do not mistake that for polish though. This thing still rolls in smelling like stale smoke, engine oil, and trouble. But the songwriting feels more deliberate, the execution meaner, and the whole record more consistent from start to finish.

And even at just eight songs, III absolutely delivers the goods. No filler, no dead air, just nasty garage punk rock-’n’-roll with enough sneering melodies to leave bruises.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Mrs. Magician || Spiritual Hangover

California garage pop with the top down

By / / Garage Rock, Indie Rock, Power Pop / 1 Comment

About sixteen years after their instantly classic debut and a decade removed from Bermuda, Mrs. Magician return with their third LP. To my ears, Spiritual Hangover recaptures some of the magic of that debut while also sounding broader and more confident. The songwriting feels sharper, the musicianship richer, the whole thing just a little bigger without losing the band’s charm.

Mrs. Magician do not exactly hide their Californian roots, and this is a sun-soaked, beach-ready record packed with smooth and catchy songs that could easily soundtrack an aimless drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, or audition to be on an inevitable reboot of The O.C.. Like the recent Crocodiles LP, this is a band that knows how to make energetic garage pop sound sleek, addictive, and accessible without becoming too predictable.

LP available now on Swami Records, the label run by the legendary John Reis, who also plays on the record. Not a bad co-sign to have.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs

New EP: Peachy || Body Horror

An emotionally charged debut that refuses to look away

By / / Garage Rock, Punk / Leave a Comment

On their debut EP Body Horror, Peachy capture rage, vulnerability and razor-sharp wit into five songs of blistering indie-punk. The Magandjin/Brisbane (Australia) four-piece excel in scuzzy guitars and shout-along choruses (“I don’t want anybody else, I don’t want anybody else,”—from infectious opening track Gutted), sometimes singing at an impressive pace (“You can take her body, if you’ve got her mind”—from Her Bones), but not shying away from a vulnerable ballad (“Wait for me // I’m unsteady // Yeah”—from Wait4me). This is the kind of music—tight, expressive, and convincing both musically and vocally—that demands to be experienced at maximum volume and with full attention. It’s powerful, intense, and urgent.

Beneath the controlled structure of jagged riffs and cathartic hooks is a powerful throughline of reclaiming autonomy, refusing to stay silent, disposable or unseen. The lyrics unpack the emotional and physical toll of existing in a world shaped by misogyny, manipulation and insecurity, moving between intimate anxiety, fractured relationships, and experiences of harassment and objectification. The rightly biting commentary on womanhood and survival is most evident in the masterfully constructed and impressively worded anthem 13 (“Sick of excuses, the big and small abuses that were made”), which deserves a video as mandatory education.



Body Horror is out digitally (self-released). Featuring Melita Collins (rhythm guitar, vocals), Madi Morris (lead guitar, backing vocals), Georgina Joyce (bass, vocals), and Eliza Heath (drums).

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New single: Cable TV || That’s the Reason b/w Static

Crunchy guitars from the edge of Canada

By / / Garage Rock, Indie Rock, Power Pop / Leave a Comment

Cable TV are a new-ish three-piece from St. John’s (Newfoundland and Labrador), who have apparently spent the last couple of months (or maybe longer , the band admits), grinding away on their debut album. As a sign of life, or better yet a sign of great things to come, they’ve just released a two-song cassingle on Barely There Records.

The songs are about “wandering the streets of town and wondering what is happening,” which honestly feels pretty relatable. Sonically, this thing lands right in our wheelhouse. Sounding a bit like a mashup of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and The Replacements, Cable TV sit somewhere between classic indie rock and power pop, with enough bar-band swagger to keep things from getting too clean-cut. The guitars come in satisfyingly crunchy, the hooks stick, and both songs have that loose, rockin’ feel that makes you want to hear a full album immediately. I’m definitely sticking around.

Also worth checking out is the band’s 7″ from last year, which we somehow completely missed the first time around. Consider that mistake corrected. Mark Cable TV down as a band to watch.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New single: The Giant Robots || Spooky Signs

Two-minute anthems for broken hearts and burned-out dancefloors

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

There’s something gloriously out of time about The Giant Robots. Thirty years deep into their fuzz-soaked mission, the Lausanne, Switzerland-based garage rock lifers still sound like they’ve just staggered out of a smoke-filled basement club with blown amps. This new 45 is classic Giant Robots, as cool as it should be. A-side Spooky Signs offers graveyard romance, eerie Farfisa shimmer, warming harmonies, and enough distorted swagger to wake the dead. Flip it over for Goodbye, a softer, jangling slice of mid-sixties melancholy that hits the mark with mod-pop sweetness without losing the band’s crooked edge. Produced in style, uplifting in impact; somehow, against all odds, this out of time sound is still very easy to embrace in 2026.

Spooky Signs b/w Goodbye is out digitally and on vinyl 7″ through Rogue Records.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Mick Beaulieu || Nightmare Twang

Riding a retro cult-film vibe

By / / Garage Rock, Surf / Leave a Comment

Without any fanfare, French musician Mick Beaulieu returns with Nightmare Twang, following 2024’s Seashore LP. Doing what he does best, he lets his guitar do the talking. In the slipstream of pioneers like Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and Dick Dale, he performs ten original surf rock instrumentals that sound as if equally inspired by haunted drive-in movies and sun-bleached California highways.

The album blends reverb-drenched licks and splashing organ melodies with a modern production touch that keeps the sound fresh rather than nostalgic. It’s stylish and energetic, vicious yet playful, a testament to the skill of an artist who makes the stars in the dark sky shine just a little brighter.



Nightmare Twang is out digitally via Crash! Records.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New EP: King Automatic || Playing 6 Garage & Sixties Hits!

The perfect Collision of 60s garage grit and classic rocksteady rhythms

By / / Blues & Roots, Garage Rock / Leave a Comment

The title of this EP is telling, but leave it to French one-man band King Automatic to flip the script on raised expectations. Graeme Allwright’s Akou (aka Them’s Gloria), The Gories’ Thunderbird ESQ, The Seeds’ Pushing Too Hard, Jacques Dutronc’s L’augmentation, and The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction are transformed into gritty Jamaican rocksteady, driven by King A’s signature live-looped orchestra of sound. It works incredibly well, but as a surprising cool icing on the steaming cake, Prince Buster’s One Step Beyond is inverted, stripped of its syncopated ska roots, and hammered out like a primitive 60s garage stomper. Greasy and lo-fi but danceable and powerful, this is an inimatable masterclass in genre-bending rhythm, beat, and fuzz.


Playing 6 Garage & Sixties Hits!—arranged, performed, recorded, and mixed by King Automatic—is out digitally and on 10″ vinyl through Slovenly Recordings.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs || Slovenly

New album: The Lizzards || Cold to the Bone

This trio from Winnipeg is scrappy in all the right places

By / / Garage Rock, Punk / Leave a Comment

Here’s a new tape from Eat Em Up, a Winnipeg label we only covered before once, but probably should look to more often.

It brings 12 songs from The Lizzards. Well, 11 really, since Whenever You’re Around is a cover of a Griefs tune. This trio includes Jan Quakenbush, who recently put out a fun record I considered writing about before it got lost in the shuffle.

The Lizzards play a raucous kind of rock ’n’ roll that lands somewhere between ’70s proto-punk and the strain of garage pop that had a real moment around 2010 to 2015. Fuzzy, scrappy, catchy, and a little ragged around the edges. Effective stuff.

Apparently, this is The Lizzards third album already. This release makes me want to dive into their complete roster for some digital crate digging.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Thee Seizures || Introducing…

A lo-fi whirlwind of organ-driven chaos

By / / Garage Rock, Psych / Leave a Comment

Thee Seizures are an “anti-fascist acid punk” duo from Lisbon, Portugal, who needed just two wild days to cut their debut album Introducing… (they already shared the eight tracks digitally themselves last November, but have since signed with Groovie Records, who fired up the vinyl press and threw in alternative cover art, so we can safely consider this a new release). The record takes us us from The 13th Floor—it must be a hell of a party there—to My Mind, a fascinating trip.

It’s all grooving organ grind and drum thunder; proving guitars are superfluous when the energy is this feral. Equal parts garage punk grit and psychedelic rock swirl, the two musicians lure the ghost of the 1960s into something raw, sweaty, and out of step with the trends yet defiantly present. It’s chaotic, rebellious, and impossible to ignore, exactly how rock ‘n’ roll should feel right now.



Introducing Thee Seizures—recorded and mixed by Ulpiano Capalbo—is out digitally and on vinyl LP through Groovie Records. Featuring Alex Aspin (organ) and André Martins (drums).

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

Scroll to Top