All The Best New Indie Music From This Week

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 archival release from the Foo Fighters, the live debut of a new track from the Strokes, mysterious new tracks from Big Thief, and a dance number from Wild Nothing.

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Foo Fighters — 00959525

Dave Grohl’s solo-side-project-turned-to-biggest-rock-band-in-the-world is celebrating their twenty-fifth year of activity in 2020, and are prepping a new album. In the meantime, they have been steadily sharing archival releases from across the last quarter century. According to Derrick Rossignol for Uproxx, the latest entry in the series is “filled with relics from that might not be familiar to casual Foo Fighters fans,” featuring handful of solo tracks recorded by Grohl during his time in a little band you probably don’t know called Nirvana.

The Strokes — “Ode To The Mets” (Live)

During a debaucherous New Years Eve homecoming show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Julian Casablancas revealed that The Strokes will have a new album out soon, before launching into a track called “Ode To The Mets” where Casablancas only forgot some of the words. As noted by Derrick Rossignol for Uproxx, “there have been signs over the past year or so that a Strokes return was imminent. This past summer, the group performed at Spain’s Bilbao BBK Live festival, a performance that press materials said would “kick off their global comeback.” Last May, they also performed a new song at their first show in two years. Hopefully the coming months will bring more clarity on what to expect from The Strokes in 2020.

Wild Nothing — “Foyer”

Later this month, Wild Nothing will release a new five-song EP entitled Laughing Gas. “Foyer” is the first taste of that effort, written and recorded in the same sessions as Jack Tatum’s 2018 effort Indigo, and existing on the same danceable and groovy plane. The Laughing Gas EP will be released in succession with the tenth anniversary of the band’s debut album Gemini. “I think of the EP’s title as being representative of a kind of manufactured bliss and loss of control,” Tatum said in a statement. “Ultimately I think this EP finds me in a place of trying to go easier on myself. I’ve been extremely fortunate to continue releasing the music I love after 10 years of Wild Nothing and this release feels no different.”

Field Music — “Do You Read Me?”

The final preview of the UK art rockers’ new nineteen-track concept album Making A New World, “Do You Read Me?” is another story about a post-World War I planet with Bowie-influenced vocals. It’s a more somber number than the album’s other samples, but still doesn’t stray too far from the DNA that makes Field Music such a special group.

Illuminati Hotties — “Post Everything”

Since the debut Illuminati Hotties album in 2018, Sarah Tudzin has been steadily releasing new music on Bandcamp — a mixture of originals and covers. On the latest track “Post Everything,” Tudzin examines an impending doomsday. “The world’s burnin, so why the hell not,” the band wrote in the song’s description on Bandcamp. “Happy 2020.”

Spanish Love Songs — “Kick”

Along with the announcement of their third full-length album Brave Faces Everyone, Spanish Love Songs shared the new track “Kick,” which is immediately reminiscent of the Menzingers (in that it’s very good punk music). As with many of the tracks on this particular list, the goal of the song and entirety of Brave Faces Everyone is to make the constant insanity twenty-first century living just a little less jarring. “We want the album to be a knowing nod and a way to make the world a slightly more bearable, even if it’s just for 40 minutes,” vocalist/guitarist Dylan Slocum shared in a statement.

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