Punk

New EP: Institute || Institute

Essential noise from Texas

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Texas punk veterans Institute are touring Australia for the first time and have teamed up with Anti-Fade Records for something fresh and essential at the merch table: a three-song 7″ that, for entirely selfish reasons, I hope does not sell out immediately. Too bad that shipping this thing overseas will cost about as much as the record player you spin it on.

Three songs, zero filler. And once again Institute prove they are operating on a different level than most so-called punk bands. Call it punk, call it rock, call it post-whatever. The attitude is what counts.

Lead track The Shooter is the gut punch. Sour, tense, melodic in a way that makes the bitterness land harder. Lyrically it goes straight for America’s gun delusions, delivered with the kind of drained fury that sounds like it has been simmering for years. Institute are fed-up and razor sharp.

The other two tracks hit with the same urgency. This does not feel like tour filler. It feels necessary. Institute still have plenty to say, and they play like it matters.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: The Dumpies || Lub Dub

Primitive punk with no safety net

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New Dumpies? On Dirt Cult Records? Come on. You already know. Unless you need your punk rock polished until it shines like a car commercial, this is for you.

These songs barely crack 100 seconds. Blink and you are flipping the record already. But that is part of the charm. Lub Dub is all impulse, no safety net. It sounds like the band kicked in the door, hit record, and trusted their gut. And here is the thing. Under all that glorious racket, there are hooks. Real ones. The kind that sneak up on you. The Dumpies, making their fourth appearance on the wantlist, toss them off like it is nothing, buried inside blown-out guitars and basement-level fidelity.

I cannot decide what I like more. That Lub Dub feels completely off the cuff, or that it is secretly tight as hell. This is primitive punk done right. Fast, messy, and smart.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Dirt Cult

New album: Toys That Kill || Triple Sabotage

DIY lifers showing how it’s done

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No disrespect, but there are veteran bands whose new records I approach with mild suspicion. The kind that feel like reheated leftovers from a meal that once changed your life. Familiar ingredients, less fire.

Then there is Toys That Kill. Instead of flooding the zone, they resurface every few years, often out of nowhere, just to remind everyone how it is done. Since forming around 2000, Triple Sabotage is only their sixth full-length and their first since 2016. It arrives on Todd Congelliere’s own Recess Records, so you know it will be good.

It’s better.

Toys That Kill still write and play top-tier garage punk, but they never turn it into a history lesson. They are the cool teachers of DIY. Not preaching, just leading by example and making you want to stay after class.

If there were any weak moments in these recording sessions, they did not make the cut. The opening trio is especially strong. My Kinda Rockstar sets the tone, Inside The Residue locks in with its insistent hook, and by the time My Cutting Board hits, you are already texting friends that Toys That Kill have a new record. And yes, it rips.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Recess

New album: Heather The Jerk || Scroll If You Love Devil

The kind of gift you play to death

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I am of the opinion that people celebrating their birthday should be treated. So discovering that Heather Sawyer, aka Heather Hussy, aka Heather The Jerk, gifted us a surprise new album for her own birthday feels like something we absolutely do not deserve. It comes on a very limited pressing of 25 tapes, which is obviously a wink at her new age.

Then you press play and get knocked sideways by its ramshackle charm. Sawyer brings the hits this time, leaning hard into the catchy garage-pop side of her songwriting. Wantlist favorite Doug Busson of Yuasa-Exide shows up, there is a killer cover of Hate Your Guts by Loli & the Chones, and still you will end up playing the whole thing front to back, over and over.

If the idea of a punked-up stash of lost ’60s girl group demos sounds good to you, this sounds even better. Heather and Josh rip through one hook after another with fuzz on the edges and zero polish where it does not belong. And if you are wondering how many times I played My Dumb Brain, I’m On My Way and Way it Goes today, I appreciate the question. I stopped counting yesterday.

Happy birthday, Heather. You really should not have. We are blasting it anyway.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: The Dahmers || Creature Feature

Hooks crawling out of the crypt

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With a giant monster hand smashing through a busted TV and lightning cracking behind the logo, The Dahmers turn Creature Feature into a full-on B-movie fever dream before you even press play. Add song titles like Nightmare of ’78, Creeps From Outer Space, Teenage Caveman and Wake Up the Dead, and you are about to enter a late-night horror marathon soundtracked by cheap thrills.

A marathon may not be the best description of Creature Feature, though. Plenty of these songs feel more like a sprint, a burst of horror glam punk dripping in blob-like fluid or sticky with unidentifiable glue-like material. Jeepers creepers, this stuff is infectious.

More than ever, The Dahmers lean into theatrics and bombast without throwing away what they do best: writing insanely hooky rock-‘n’-roll tunes and playing them with a swagger you cannot teach. These Swedes, with their perverted minds, were born to play like this. We should all be grateful.

Creature Feature (produced by Johan Gustafsson and Christian Grahn of The Hives) is out now on LP via Eerie Sounds.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New single: HOT PENNIES || YOU SUCK b/w I’M TIRED

A Valentine release that sounds like a bar brawl

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HOT PENNIES (Tempe, Arizona) is a project by TRASH ANDERSON, whose caps lock button is clearly stuck. Perhaps that’s why their Valentine-themed single comes with two songs titled YOU SUCK and I’M TIRED. Nothing says romance like screaming your ambivalence into a microphone.

Here, ANDERSON is joined by DANA S. (JJCnV, Sturdy Ladies) and it is a goddamn MATCH! YOU SUCK has a killer chorus, a repetition of “I CAN’T STAND TO BE WITH OR BE WITHOUT YOU,” ending in a well-meant YOU SUCK! that feels less like an insult and more like the kind of messy, contradictory love that keeps you up at night. It’s hostile, it’s honest, and it absolutely rips.

I’M TIRED is a reworked version of some obscure country tune DANA once showed TRASH, transformed into a dirty, revved-up garage rocker where the dual vocals are worth the freakin’ price of admission.

This is the third HOT PENNIES single in thirteen months. Bookmark their Bandcamp page, because I’m convinced more of  the good stuff will come. We’ll be listening.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Joyride! || Joyfride and Friends!

When your friends make you an even more likeable band

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

We don’t get new music from San Francisco’s Joyride! often, but you know what’s even better than a new Joyride! album? A new album by Joyride! and friends. Jason, Eugene, and Jenna are joined here by their pals Bean, Mai, Jules, Neal, Vicky, Kyle, and Rebs. I don’t know any of these people personally, and I’m not sure naming them all is strictly informative, but I’m absolutely not passing up the opportunity to write ten first names in a music review.

On topic! Joyride! and Friends is fun as hell. It has that trademark charm and catchy indie punk vibe of their past work: midpaced and punchy, burning with a communal spirit and a shared sense of growing up. Lyrically, this thing has serious John K. Samson vibes, like a diary written by a poet with a sharp pen. It’s relatable, life-affirming stuff, sitting somewhere between a therapy session and a long drive with your best friends: full of self-doubt, hard-won wisdom, and the kind of honest reckoning with time and loss that hits harder the older you get. A sense of melancholy is never far away, but the record also sounds like recording these songs was the best possible time for everyone involved. Like a personal mixtape to said long drive.

Damn, this is a whole lot of fun, a great concept executed beautifully.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Middleman || Following The Ghost

Melody, abrasion, conviction come together on Middleman's debut LP

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London’s Middleman previously released a 7″ and an EP, but it is on their debut LP Following The Ghost that they arrive in full, with several exclamation marks attached. This is the kind of band with the power, emotional urgency and clear identity that makes you stop skipping and actually commit to the songs.

They trigger all the familiar reference points in your brain, yet never feel derivative. There is that sense of recognition, but it always lands in a way that feels distinctly Middleman. For the sake of orientation, think early Superchunk, Wipers, and more than a few of the bands immortalized in Our Band Could Be Your Life. Guitars that bite and shimmer. A rhythm section that stays locked in. Vocals that genuinely sound like they mean it. Middleman offer plenty for punks and alts alike.

What really elevates Following The Ghost is the tension between melody and abrasion. Even the quieter moments carry weight, as if the band is constantly on the verge of tipping over into something louder.

Few bands in 2026 play this strain of alternative rock with this much conviction. I am fully convinced.


Following The Ghost is out now on Evil Speaker Records.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New single: Private Lives || Think I’m Coming Around

Touring Europe brings out the heat in Montreal's Private Lives

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Montreal’s Private Lives are heading out on a European tour, which feels like the perfect excuse to drop a 7″ on one of Europe’s finest labels, Bachelor Records. If you are going to cross the ocean, you might as well have fresh boxes of vinyl waiting for your arrival.

The sonic direction leans into the punkier side of the band. The A-side, Think I’m Coming Around, is about as close as Private Lives have come to matching the sharp snap of singer Jackie Blenkarn’s other band, Pale Lips. It is urgent, hooky, and delivered with that slightly unhinged cool she does so well.

B-side Television Faces is no throwaway. It leans into the rockin’ edge and overall garage vibe of Private Lives. Together, the two tracks make a strong case for the humble single as a format that still matters.

Yes, the market for 7-inches is tough right now, for labels and fans. But as long as records like this keep landing, talk of extinction feels wildly premature.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Bachelor

New album: Kissa || I Hate Music

*does not believe these Fins hate music at all*

By / / Garage Rock, Glam Rock, Power Pop, Punk / 1 Comment

I Hate Music is Kissa’s third album. It is a bold title for a statement release. Of course, the title does not need a sarcasm emoji to reveal its cheekiness. Just press play and any doubt disappears. The band, fronted by Günter Kivioj, is absolutely smitten with catchy, punky pop rock-‘n’-roll.

Kissa brings the hits and then some. Those hyperactive hard rock kids in the back of the class who can’t stop drawing band logos and keep getting expelled for their shenanigans? Kissa is proof they turn out just fine. Listening front to back feels like a sugar rush that never loses its appeal. Zero nausea, zero hate, 100% pop hooks and smile. Damn, how I absolutely love I Hate Music. It is out now on Svart Records.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Svart

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