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 Microwave, Porter Robinson, Nilüfer Yanya, and more.
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Hovvdy – Hovvdy
Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, the duo otherwise known as Hovvdy, are responsible for some of the most understated yet no less disarming indie rock music in recent memory. Their self-titled double album transmutes that affable air and breezy brotherliness to a bigger stage, exploring all the nuances within their work without exhausting them. Like a long hangout with close friends that goes way past your normal bedtime, you strangely won’t feel as tired as you do happily fulfilled.
Microwave – Let’s Start Degeneracy
Pop-punk and emo trio Microwave are back with Let’s Start Degeneracy, an album that, contradictory to its title, navigates rejuvenation as the result of prolonged enlightenment. The story begins with a Peruvian ayahuasca retreat, but the Atlanta musicians don’t limit themselves to a press narrative. Let’s Start Degeneracy sees vocalist-guitarist Nathan Hardy, drummer Timothy “Tito” Pittard, and bassist Tyler Hill morph their music into thrilling new shapes, adopting a psychedelic, synthy sheen to each of its 10 songs. Despite the record’s name, LSD champions regeneration.
Babehoven – Water’s Here In You
Water’s Here In You, the latest album from slowcore-meets-indie-folk duo Babehoven, is unequivocally their best work yet. It’s a canny distillation of how Maya Bon and Ryan Albert make their introspective quietude resonate like cacophonous church bells. “Cold wind, candles are out / Glowing in the darkness, lightness is loud,” Bon sings at the top of “Lightness Is Loud.” Similar to how a flame can hold your attention with only the slightest of flickers, Babehoven beckons you into their gentle glow.
Crumb – “The Bug”
Who would’ve thought that a song originally inspired by bed bugs would eventually, partially turn into a song about our closest loved ones? In the early days of Crumb, vocalist Lila Ramani woke up with countless bites from bed bugs after a night in a Nebraska motel, and the outro was born from that unpleasant experience. Only now have Crumb taken that song, “The Bug,” into the studio, and it took a different shape from what they initially envisioned. “[T]he bug doesn’t have to be an insect,” Ramani said in a press statement. The bug could be “a friend, a lover, or that nagging feeling that finds you late at night.”
Kara Jackson – “Right, Wrong Or Ready”
Kara Jackson released one of the best albums of 2023, the tender, masterful Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?, and she has rightfully been getting her flowers for it. Ahead of her imminent tour, she has shared her cover of Karen Dalton’s “Right, Wrong Or Ready.” It has become a staple in Jackson’s live sets, usually as her opening song. Although it’s a cover, Jackson’s rendition contains all the striking pathos and guileless candor that permeates her songwriting.
Porter Robinson – “Knock Yourself Out XD”
In Porter Robinson’s latest single, “Knock Yourself Out XD,” the indie-pop producer utters a phrase that absolutely cannot be ignored. “B*tch, I’m Taylor Swift,” he sings with complete glee, or at least a type of fervor that merely resembles glee. By evoking the biggest pop star in recent memory, and a billionaire at that, Robinson underscores a two-pronged issue that courses through his artistry: how his fans perceive him and how he perceives himself. It’s central to the parasocialism that has infiltrated Robinson’s career and, coincidentally, Swift’s. Whereas 2021’s Nurture was uplifting and hopeful, his new track, off the forthcoming Smile! :D, leans slightly more into the other side of that coin, albeit with a playful edge. With emoticon faces, SNES synths, and even GarageBand-sampled drums, Robinson firmly plants his tongue in his cheek.
Nilüfer Yanya – “Like I Say (I Runaway)”
2022’s Painless was by and large one of the finest records of that year, indie rock or otherwise. Nilüfer Yanya is back with (seemingly) a one-off single, “Like I Say (I Runaway),” one of her heaviest tunes to date. Its shoegazey guitar chords in the chorus sound ripped straight out of something like Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, but it’s not a hollow facsimile. Like all of Yanya’s work, this song is completely her own. She isn’t replicating; she’s evolving.
Florist – “Riding Around In The Dark”
Jane Schoenbrun’s much-hyped new horror film, I Saw The TV Glow, comes out in a matter of days. Its soundtrack, featuring Yeule, Caroline Polachek, Phoebe Bridgers, and Bartees Strange, is worthy of its own hype. “Riding Around In The Dark,” Florist’s contribution to the A24 OST, is a beautiful tune abounding with gossamer guitars and Emily Sprague’s hushed delivery, like many Florist songs. But there’s an undercurrent of dread, as well: hints of a tragic, disturbing mystery that haunts an otherwise idyllic town à la Blue Velvet. To name that mystery, though, would be beside the point. Rather, its power lies in Florist’s evocation of a feeling, one that exists beyond plain description.
Shannon Lay – “Mirrors”
Los Angeles singer-songwriter Shannon Lay urges you to “see your reflection in the sky.” In the press materials for her new single, “Mirrors,” the punk-turned-folk musician declares a path to self-acceptance through her art, and the same can be done for us. “There is nothing wrong with us. We are unique and beautiful and chaotic just like the stars we come from,” she says. Created alongside her collaborator Rob Shelton, “Mirrors” is another stunner in Lay’s stellar oeuvre.
Sega Bodega – Dennis
Sega Bodega’s strain of dark, bass-heavy trance music echoes across the globe. It’s so fashionable that it has started to feel like a lot of pop music drawing from it is now folding in on itself, like a kaleidoscope repeating its geometric patterns ad infinitum. Salvador Navarrete, the architect behind Sega Bodega and an in-demand pioneer of this sound, doesn’t let his work succumb to such pitfalls on Dennis. On songs like the choral, majestic “True” and the glitchy, side-chained “Elk Skin,” Sega Bodega reminds us that this style is one he helped popularize.
