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 best new indie music from the past seven days. This week, we got new music from Foxing, Porches, Nilüfer Yanya, and more.
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Foxing – Foxing
For an album that nearly drove Foxing apart, the St. Louis emo quartet’s self-titled record presents them at their most unified. Clocking in at nearly an hour, Foxing traverses a wide swath of sonic playground: nü-metal, screamo, indie rock, and, of course, the twinkly, heart-on-sleeve emo they originally built their name on. It might just be their best work to date.
Allegra Krieger – Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine
Allegra Krieger’s new album flows with the impermanent urgency of and, in turn, appreciation for, life itself. After nearly completing Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine, the New York singer-songwriter’s fifth full-length, Krieger almost died in an apartment fire caused by a lithium-battery explosion in the e-bike shop housed on the first floor. The remaining recording sessions didn’t flow with rushed dread but a sense of gratitude. That much is present in the gorgeous music Krieger has given us on Infinity Machine. While not all of it reckons with this near-death experience, it acknowledges the sundry, messy complexities of living across its 13 spellbinding songs.
Floating Points – Cascade
Sam Shepherd has spent the past few years wandering. From Promises, the ambient jazz masterpiece he created alongside the late Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, to producing J-pop legend Hikaru Utada’s 2022 LP Bad Mode, Shepherd has stayed busy regardless of his main project, Floating Points. On Cascade, the first new solo Floating Points joint in five years, Shepherd is no longer wandering. He’s locked back in, making playful electronic music, armed with a batch of nine bangers fit for the club.
Porches – Shirt
While touring behind his 2021 album as Porches, All Day Gentle Hold !, Aaron Maine cranked up the volume and distortion knobs. Songs that previously leaned more into the synth-pop side of things gained a second life as rambunctious thrashers. Maine went back to the drawing board with this rowdier mindset, and the result, Shirt, is a stirring exercise in exorcism. Summoning crunchy guitars and boisterous drums on tracks like “Sally” and “Rag,” Porches comes back completely reinvigorated.
Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor
Nilüfer Yanya is three for three. Following splendid albums like 2019’s Miss Universe and 2022’s Painless, the British indie rocker has returned with yet another tour de force. My Method Actor, her third and best record, firmly cements Yanya as one of modern indie’s greatest actors. On songs such as the riveting opener “Keep On Dancing” and the gritty, immediately memorable “Like I Say (I Runaway),” she sounds radiant and self-assured, exuding a well-earned confidence in her prowess.
julie – my anti-aircraft friend
One of my good friends once described Sonic Youth’s music as “guitars are happening,” and, for both of us, that’s high praise. A lot of young bands draw from the ‘80s and ‘90s DIY scenes to filter their own music through, heavily mining those sounds if not straight-up ripping them off. Though julie, an LA trio with a major-label debut LP, my anti-aircraft friend, sound a lot like Sonic Youth, they also sound a lot like julie. Condensing Sonic Youth’s ambitious, atonal sprawls into bite-sized chunks, julie haven’t just streamlined a wildly adventurous sound so much as rendered it their own. Many new bands make ‘90s-indebted shoegaze. Then again, many bands don’t do it nearly as well as julie.
Pom Pom Squad – “Street Fighter”
Mia Berrin and co-producer Cody Fitzgerald stumbled upon an auspicious accident when toying around with synth patches for the new Pom Pom Squad album: They found something that sounded like it was straight out of a Street Fighter game. Using the influential game series as a basis for Pom Pom Squad’s new single, “Street Fighter,” Berrin blazes ahead with a seething yet playful fury.
FKA twigs – “Eusexua”
“Eusexua,” an adaptation of the Greek word “euphoria,” is an earned space for FKA twigs. As one of the most exciting and visionary artists occupying left-of-center pop music these days, twigs deserves her flowers. So it only makes sense that the title track of next year’s Eusexua unfolds as beautifully as a flower itself. Shifting from a muted thump to a fittingly euphoric techno beat, “Eusexua” is a reminder that twigs goes beyond tears in the club; she’s here to both provide joy and experience it for herself.
Porridge Radio – “A Hole In The Ground”
The next Porridge Radio album, Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, is out in just a month. Before then, however, the Brighton indie rockers have shared another preview of what’s to come. “A Hole In The Ground,” as figurehead Dana Margolin puts it in a press release, is about “predicting horrible futures that come true and self-fulfill.” Porridge Radio’s latest single is thick with despair, outlining the prophetic contours of what will soon pass.
Franz Ferdinand – “Audacious”
The last time Franz Ferdinand were making headlines, it was for a greatest-hits album that distilled the key aspects of each of their records for a compilation album of their most indelible tunes. Now, the Glasgow blog-rock greats are back with a proper new studio LP. “Audacious,” the lead single of next year’s The Human Fear, is pure Franz Ferdinand, as Alex Kapranos’ crooning vocals collide with post-punky guitars and a steady groove.
