Indie Pop

New album: adults || the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless

DIY pop that’s humble, catchy, and quietly confident

By / / Indie Pop, Power Pop, Punk / Leave a Comment

South London-based adults remind me of Durham’s (and the rest of the planet’s) greatest indie punks, Martha. Not quite as punk sonically, but they share the same charm, hooks, DIY attitude, and communal spirit — only with a gentler, pop-leaning touch. Twee indie punk pop? Something like that.

Their second album, the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless (out today on green and pink vinyl at Fika Recordings), feels more sonically varied than their debut. There are moments that nod to Los Campesinos! (dead red and going round the houses) and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (patterns). It all makes sense — these are the bands adults list as influences, but their ulimate goal is to write “one song as good as the world’s best band (Martha).” Which honestly is enough to make me an instant fan of this outfit.

Featuring members of Fresh, New Starts, Wolf Girl, Tomboy Grandpa, and Top Deck, adults have a humble nature that shines through everything — the lowercase band name and the song titles, the unpretentious tone. It’s not an aesthetic choice; it’s a reflection of who they are. They underpromise and overdeliver. This is music that radiates warmth and community — you can almost imagine them inviting you to join in if you happen to be kind enough.

For such a modest band, the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless feels surprisingly confident and generous though. Much to discover, much to like on this one!

On an end note: We were at Left of the Dial last week (read our report here), and while the festival was a joy, we missed a bit of that brightness and melodic spark. adults are exactly the kind of band we’d love to see on next year’s lineup — bands and labels, take note: submissions are open now.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

Album review: Optic Sink || Lucky Number

Post punk you can dance to

By / / Alternative Rock, Indie Pop, Punk / Leave a Comment

Another week, another fine release from Feel It Records. This time it’s Lucky Number, the third album by Memphis trio Optic Sink — featuring members of NOTS, FFO Total Control, Boy Harsher, Belgrado, Lust for Youth, The Serfs — and it’s a hypnotic collision of post-punk tension and body-moving rhythm.

Even for a label that thrives on idiosyncrasy, this one stands out. Optic Sink make post-punk you can dance to: darkly propulsive, sharp-edged, and weirdly elegant. There’s a pulse here that’s hard to resist — you can feel it in the basslines, in the clipped vocal delivery, in the metallic shimmer of the synths. Lyrically, Natalie Hoffmann writes like someone cataloging the confusion of modern life through a cracked mirror.

Produced by Caufield Schnug of Sweeping Promises, Lucky Number sounds sharp and intentional — tight, patient, minimal, and glimmering at the edges. Even if you’re not the kind to hit the floor, this one will still pull you into its rhythm.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Feel It Records

New album: The Lovely Basement || Lowlands

Philosophy, faith, and friendship

By / / Country & Folk, Indie Pop / Leave a Comment

An embracing alt-country hum meets unhurried psychedelic pop, carried by a wiry guitar bite and loose vocals—idiosyncratic and distinctive. We listen to The Lovely Basement, which rises above itself on Lowlands. If you like your music a little skewed and your melancholy served with jangling melody, this is a nice place to linger.

The ten songs here wrestle with human fallibility, while finding solace in community, art, and small acts of endurance. We wander through questions of faith, freedom, loss, and meaning in a world that’s both fragile and absurd. Beneath the wry observations runs a steady current of hope: that even as the world changes or collapses, there’s warmth, humor, and dignity to be found.



Lowlands—produced by Kevin Bache—releases November 14, digitally and on vinyl LP, through No Aloha Records and Precious Recordings of London. The Lovely Basement are a post-cool band from Bristol, UK, featuring Kevin Bache (guitars, vocals), Katie Scaife (guitars, vocals), Paul Waterworth (bass, vocals), and Steve Dew (drums, vocals).

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp (NAR) || Bandcamp (PRoL)

New album: Bubblegum Lemonade || To Surf With Love

More indie pop goodness from Laz McCluskey

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

Bubblegum Lemonade have been warming indie hearts since 2007, and their sound has grown right along with us. What once felt like pure twee power pop has stretched into something wider and more textured—sunshine with a few dreamy clouds rolling in.

To Surf With Love is a beach read of a record, the songs connected like snapshots from one seaside summer fling: the bright beginnings, the wistful middle, the waves crashing at the end. Jangling hooks and breezy melodies are still the foundation, but now wrapped in haze, atmosphere, and some shoegaze spray to keep things mysterious.

This is also Laz McCluskey’s second album release of the week—there’s a new Strawberry Whiplash record out too (read our review here), both on Matinée Recordings. They’re not identical twins, but if you love one, you’ll feel right at home with the other. The melodic DNA runs deep.

Seven albums in, Bubblegum Lemonade still eagerly chasing the perfect pop moment. To Surf With Love is proof that a band can evolve while keeping their sparkle intact.

Add to wantlist: Matinée

New album: Blake Collins || There’s Nowhere Like Here

A timeless sound carved from British Invasion dreams

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A colorful place and revolutionary period, marked by jukeboxes with flawless Britpop and hip-swaying Mods in sharp fashion—that’s the image that American-British singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Blake Collins evokes on his There’s Nowhere Like Here LP. You’ll hear twelve guitar songs with relatable lyrics and pleasant vocals, with sunny melodies and happy harmonies, with a vintage feel and sparkling veneer. A solid bridge between yesterday and today, between there and here.



There’s Nowhere Like Here—written, performed, and produced by Blake Collins—is out now digitally via Lonely Star Music.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Vanity Mirror || Super Fluff Forever

Brent Randall and Johnny Toomey move from Puff to Fluff and it's got all the good stuff

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

If you’re up for 35 minutes of ‘60s psych-pop excellence, give the new Vanity Mirror album a spin. Super Fluff Forever follows 2023’s Puff — naturally, I am already curious about the next album’s title.

Anyway, this one’s special. The guitars chime, the keys shimmer, and the percussion offers maximum support with minimal intrusion — yet everything breathes. This isn’t a museum piece pretending it’s 1967 again; it’s sharply written pop music that just happens to love the warmth of old tape and a very specific musical era. It’s not overstudied either — just alive, vibrant, and loose. I wouldn’t call it lo-fi, because it sounds too good for that, but it carries that home-recorded charm. And around every corner, another irresistible melody is waiting to win you over. As do surprising sonic turns.

Jack of All Trades and I Don’t Want to Hold Your Hand are blown-out ‘70s-style rockers that give the album a welcome jolt, but much of Super Fluff Forever feels timeless: The Dooryard Gate echoes The Everly Brothers, while Anna M and White Butterfly sound like lost ‘60s pop classics.

Out now on LP at We Are Busy Bodies.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || WABB

New album: Strawberry Whiplash || People Like Us

Dancing through the drizzle with Laz and Sandra McCluskey

By / / Indie Pop, Jangle Pop / 1 Comment

When Strawberry Whiplash announced this release with an EP earlier this year, it already felt like something special — and People Like Us delivers exactly what that EP promised. In other words, it’s everything you’d hope for from Glasgow duo Laz and Sandra McCluskey.

The title track of said EP, At the End of the Day— which I previously called “peak Strawberry Whiplash” — remains one of several highlights on the band’s  latest, a record with a healthy dose of feel-good energy. And not just because the tracklist includes cheeky titles like We Built This City on Indie Pop. This is cutesy, charming cuddlecore — twee pop excellence through and through. It’s jangly and strummy in all the right places, yet never without a trace of melancholy.

If the October blues are creeping in, Under a Summer Spell will have you longing for brighter skies, while The Vampire Life (with its defiant repetitive “I hate the sunshine”) might just help you embrace the dark months ahead. Or maybe the Tullycraft-esque One Way Ticket to Mars will tempt you to escape it all entirely. And when all else fails, Baby (You’re a Dancer) will remind you that dancing your blues away — even alone and awkwardly — still counts.

People Like Us is out now on CD via Matinée Recordings.

Add to wantlist: Matinée

New album: Maxine Gillon || Girl Songs

Dreamy confessions of lust, loss, and longing

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Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Maxine Gillon steps confidently into the spotlight with her debut album Girl Songs—a lush and cinematic collection that redefines the edges of Australian indie pop. It’s a idiosyncratic showcase of her multi-layered craft: jangling guitars shimmer against dreamy textures, while her witty, poetic lyrics trace the intersections of queer desire, intimacy, grief, and self-revelation. Sentence after sentence paint vivid vignettes of connection and disconnection, where sensuality, memory, and melancholy entwine in equal measure.

After seven original songs, Maxine Gillon closes with a reimagining of Tim Buckley’s Song To The Siren, a fitting finale for a record so steeped in emotional and sonic depth. This is a personal and polished first effort, intimate and distinctly her own.



Girl Songs—written, arranged, performed, recorded and produced by Maxine Gillon—is out now digitally (self-released).

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

Festival report || Left of the Dial 2025

By / / Alternative Rock, Blues & Roots, Country & Folk, Garage Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Jangle Pop, Psych, Punk / 1 Comment

This weekend, the Add To Wantlist crew was back in Rotterdam’s city center, for the annual showcase festival Left of the Dial. The menu featured nearly 150 acts (playing multiple times) in 19 different venues (including churches, a lightship, the library, a theatre, an exhibition space, an arcade hall, and a salsa club), along with an interesting side program (with bands on a boat and free daytime shows). It was also nice that The Replacements, to whom the event owes its name, were prominently featured on the playlists between shows.

The organizers once again deserve a lot of kudos for pulling off such a massive logistical operation, despite the storm and rain, but also for another diverse and solid line-up that was largely new to us as well. Not all genres were necessarily up our alley (to be honest, most of the choices were further from our preferences than in previous editions), but that’s also the appeal of such an adventure: so much to discover, with something for everyone who doesn’t follow the crowd.

Anyway, below we’ll share what we found to be the highlights—in order of appearance, and with some music embedded to give you an idea of ​​what you missed (and a chance to add it to your wantlist).

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Festival report || Left of the Dial 2025Read More »

New album: Good Flying Birds || Tallulah’s Tape

A crate digger's dream has arrived on vinyl

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

The debut album by Good Flying Birds technically arrived in early 2025 as a cassette on Rotten Apple, but it only hit my radar now thanks to a fresh vinyl release from Smoking Room and Carpark Records. Whether Tallulah’s Tape counts as a true debut is up for debate — it compiles sixteen home recordings and demos made between 2021 and 2024 — but for a band already lo-fi by design, that fits perfectly. Sure, there are some rough edges and odd corners, but they only add to the crate-digger charm.

What lingers is the sheer number of gems buried here, and that sense of discovery when you realize just how sharp their pop instincts are. It’s scrappy, jangly, and slightly twee underground pop with the occasional psych shimmer. There’s a definite ’80s UK undercurrent, but fans of contemporary bands like Sharp Pins, The Smashing Times, 2nd Grade or Now will soon be raving about Good Flying Birds.

This band will go places, no doubt.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Carpark || Smoking Room

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