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 Palmyra, Matt Berninger, Set Dressing, and more.
While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.
Palmyra – “Palm Readers”
The South holds a rich musical lineage. From country luminaries like Lucinda Williams to hip-hop eccentrics like Outkast, the South has got something to say, as André 3000 so famously put it. Enter Palmyra, a Virginian indie-rock trio that re-configures an instrumental palette of mandocello, upright bass, and banjo to suit the emo-tinged milieu of I’m Wide Awake-era Bright Eyes. Restless, Palmyra’s forthcoming debut album, sets introspective studies on gender dysphoria, self-harm, and financial turmoil to a suite of six-strings. “I’m so damn lonely tonight,” sings Sasha Landon on “Palm Readers,” its latest single. Their words convey deep isolation, but the music underneath is its own balm, as warm and communal as a night in with close friends.
Feeble Little Horse – “This Is Real”
There’s a lot going on in Feeble Little Horse’s new single. “This Is Real,” the Pittsburgh four-piece’s first new song since their 2023 breakthrough Girl With Fish, pushes digital maximalism to its outermost edges, contorting and refashioning the ’90s alt-rock template of their first two records into uncanny (complimentary) shapes. It reaches its apex when Lydia Slocum unleashes the most feral scream in indie rock this side of Black Francis on the bridge of “Monkey Gone To Heaven.” “This Is Real” abides by no strictures or structures. Instead, befit to Feeble Little Horse themselves, it follows its own zany path.
Florist – “Moon, Sea, Devil”
In the years since Florist released their self-titled 2022 album, Emily Sprague found herself thinking more and more about our shared humanity, as “a collective entity, influencing each other and the world around us with many small actions, emotions, and reactions,” as she put it in a press release. The latest preview of the forthcoming Jellywish, like many Florist songs, is a soft, gorgeous paean to the Earth and the people who inhabit it. “So I reach through the veil / All the other worlds surround me,” Sprague sings over a lilting piano and swaying drum beat. Beauty is all around us, and Florist are always happy to point us in its direction.
Matt Berninger – “Bonnet Of Pins”
The National’s most recent records saw the Cincinnati crew traffic in analog drum machines and downtempo piano ballads. Frontman Matt Berninger, on his forthcoming second solo album, Get Sunk, goes back to the tried-and-true, pristine yet punchy indie rock that was all over 2010’s High Violet. Still, as lead single “Bonnet Of Pins” shows, Berninger remakes it in his own image. Alongside a coterie of contemporaries like Meg Duffy and Kyle Resnick, Berninger’s latest batch of character studies is, like “Bonnet Of Pins,” ruefully incisive.
Set Dressing – “Date Line”
Scott Fair of Mandy, Indiana recently announced a new side project, Set Dressing, via the ambient, foreboding anti-single “Class Valedictorian.” Now, with “Date Line,” Set Dressing heads in a poppier direction, albeit one with the twists and turns you’d expect from the lead songwriter of one of the buzziest industrial bands of the moment. Taken from his forthcoming debut EP, I Can’t Be Alone Tonite, “Date Line” is what you’d expect from an artist so adept at defying those expectations. With its cascading synth arpeggios, new wave drums, and vocals pitched-shifted to the high heavens, “Date Line” re-imagines pop music in Fair’s wonderfully strange world.
Sumac & Moor Mother – “Hard Truth”
Sumac and Moor Mother’s first collaborative album, The Film, is full of Homeric epics that stretch well beyond the five-minute mark. For their latest single, “Hard Truth,” the post-metal group and experimental poet opt for brevity. But that’s not to say that the piece is an immediate rush of dopamine. It’s a slow burn that grows from a bubbling, low-end pulse to flashes of distorted, buzzing guitars, which flicker throughout the stereo field like fireflies in an engulfing darkness. It’s merely a hint of the ambitious work to come.
Jack Riedy – Raw Deal
Chicago musician (and music writer) Jack Riedy just released his debut album, Raw Deal, a combination of power-pop, new wave, and psych-rock. All eight songs play like showcases for Riedy’s hooky songwriting and immaculate bass lines. Take the New Order-meets-Strokes danceability of “Your Timeline,” or the rhythmic backbone supplied by (another music writer!) Al Shipley’s drumming on “Clockwork.” Alongside (another music writer!) Hannah Jocelyn’s pristine mix, Raw Deal is, simply put, the real deal.
Kaela – “Superluminal”
The debut album from M83 keyboardist Kaela Sinclair is nearly here. Due this May, Supraliminal sees the Texas native transpose her penchant for luxe synths into atmospheric dreamworlds. “Superluminal,” its latest single and (almost) title track, builds from its kick-and-synth-bass pulse to a gauzy break with harp-like arpeggios. At the halfway mark, her voice rises to the top of the mix, cloaked in reverb: “Super. Luminal.” Cleaving the word into two discrete halves, Sinclair issues the statement like a universal truth. As the song approaches its endpoint, everything fades away, but Sinclair’s voice remains a spectral presence, not heard so much as felt.
Coolant – “The Lack”
Colin Joyce began writing “The Lack,” the lead single of his forthcoming EP, Pest, after discovering an ML Buch guitar tuning on Reddit. Clearly, the unconventional tuning unlocked something in him. As Coolant, music critic and musician Joyce got together with Ricky Eat Acid’s Sam Ray in Florida over Christmas, and, together, they recorded four songs. “The Lack,” its opening track, draws from slowcore, drone, and post-rock to reconfigure the familiar six-string into novel, emotionally resonant shapes. Atop an undercurrent of ambient feedback, Joyce’s acoustic guitar pierces through the curtain of noise with startling clarity.
Mister Romantic – “Dream”
Who knew Wreck-It Ralph had such a beautiful voice? Dewey Cox did, apparently. John C. Reilly (yes, that one) initially showcased his pipes as the protagonist of the 2007 fictitious biopic-comedy, Walk Hard. One decade and vaudevillian stage show later, Mister Romantic, Reilly’s musical sobriquet, is putting out his debut album. What’s Not To Love? positions the prolific actor as one of the great American songwriters. That is, it’s a collection of covers adapted from the Great American Songbook. It’s a role he steps into with the captivating aplomb he’s known for in his acting career, as made evident by lead single “Dream,” a lush rendition of Johnny Mercer’s 1944 standard. Across the tracklist, Reilly chronicles his titular character’s search for love. What he finds at the end of his journey is that searching is a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself.
