Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the very best of the indie releases from the past seven days. This week we got another new Tame Impala track, a creepy Soccer Mommy single from a horror movie soundtrack, and the debut solo album from Camp Cope’s Georgia Maq.
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Georgia Maq — Pleaser
Best known as the frontperson of Australian indie darlings Camp Cope, Georgia Maq took fans by surprise with the sudden release of a solo album that, well, doesn’t sound very much like Camp Cope at all. Guitars are sparse on Pleaser, instead utilizing synths and electronic drums to show a whole new side of the artist. It’s an exciting new entry in George Maq’s discography, and with any luck, we’ll start to see some of these sounds seeping into Camp Cope’s next record.
Tame Impala — “Posthumous Forgiveness”
Tame Impala’s new album is called The Slow Rush and that’s exactly what it’s felt like getting to release. The band has shared no shortage of advance tracks (four as of this writing), and all of them illustrate why Kevin Parker’s project has become one of the most in-demand artists of the late 2010s. On “Posthumous Forgiveness,” the latest entry to the Tame Impala catalogue, Kevin Parker reconciles through song with his estranged father “who passed away in 2009 from skin cancer, at 61 years old,” writes Derrick Rossignol for Uproxx.
Soccer Mommy — “Feed”
Sophie Allison wrote the latest Soccer Mommy track specifically for inclusion on The Turning‘s soundtrack, which also includes Courtney Love, Mitski, Kim Gordon, Alice Glass, Vagabon, Empress Of, Kali Uchis, Warpaint, Cherry Glazerr, and more. It’s a relatively standard sounding Soccer Mommy song, but then you listen closer to the lyrics and find out that it’s about having your guts pulled out and eaten by a demon. Very chill, very cool.
Shopping — “Initiative”
Now this is a fun one. With the announcement of their sophomore album All Or Nothing, UK post-punk rockers Shopping shared the bopping new single “Initiative.” Paired with an excellent video, “Initiative” is a track about taking charge of your life. “We found ourselves singing about being true to yourself, in an often binary and belligerent digital age, and reclaiming agency when it feels like our personal freedom and privacy is constantly eroding,” the band said in a press release announcing the album. Consider me excited for the full album.
Squirrel Flower — “Headlights”
With “Headlights,” we now have two sides of Ella O’Connor Williams’s new album under the name Squirrel Flower. While the lead single “Red Shoulder” was a straight-up rock tune, “Headlights” takes a more subdued approach, with jangly, shimmery guitars. It’s a track about a moment of existentialism in the back of the van on tour, and it comes through in the music.
Hinds — “Riding Solo”
Coming to you from sunny Barcelona, Hinds brings you a dramatic demonstration of loneliness with “Riding Solo,” even though it might sound exceptionally cheery. It features an impressively infectious chorus and distorted drum patterns to yield something familiar, yet truly exciting.
John Hopkins & Kelly Lee Owens — “Luminous Spaces”
Ethereal and cinematic, “Luminous Spaces” is one of those tracks that you throw on while driving down a long country road with the starry night sky surrounding you on all sides. Across its nearly eight-minute runtime, the track really makes something special of Kelly Lee Owens’ gorgeous reverb-soaked vocals and truly encapsulating soundscapes, before bursting into a dancing electronic groove, making for a structural likeness to LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. .
