Indie

Hailing from New Orleans but residing in San Antonio, The Holy Knives ( comprised of brothers Kyle and Kody Valentine) mix rock aesthetics with desert psychedelics, resulting in their twangy and moody, Western and modern 2018 debut EP Ritual Bloom. To learn more about what influences their soundscape, Kyle and Kody made us a playlist exploring that very notion. Read about their selections below and go right here to listen.Says the band of their mix: "This collection of songs has been an undercurrent in both the writing of our EP Ritual Bloom and our forthcoming album. Each of these pieces holds a unique place in our ears’ hearts, and all of them in their own way had a place in shaping the emotions and soundscapes of the music we have been fortunate to create this year. Some of these songs accompanied us on the road, while others kept us inspired during our writing time. We hope that you can hear how these songs have played a part in making our music what it is, as well as discover something new to inspire you."

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Honeyblood, whose sophomore album Babes Never Die was released on FatCat, are the archetypal Scottish indie band: exquisitely simple songs, hooks so clever it’s absurd, and quirky charm out the wazoo. Nearly every great band — and there are many — that the Scots have given us share these four qualities, while at the same time carving out their own unique niche. Where Belle & Sebastian craft hushed chamber pop perfect for sad-eyed art school dropouts, The Jesus and Mary Chain smother teenage symphonies to god in walls of seething fuzz. Mogwai weave lush, undulating hypnotics rooted in post-rock, while CHVRCHES veer into synth-pop polished enough for big time chart action. On top of all this, Scotland has churned out some of the best jangle pop, twee, and noise pop this side of New Zealand. That first Primal Scream album, the one before Bobby Gillespie and crew discovered acid house and ecstasy, is beyond dreamy. Then there’s the Fire Engines, spazzy, Edinburgh-bred art punks from the early ’80s who were pivotal in establishing Scotland’s very first DIY scene.

This week, Hookworms release their long-awaited third album, Microshift (via Domino Records), which, for the Leeds, UK quintet, heralds a major shift from stormy psych-punk to radiant electro-rock. For his Dowsers playlist, the band’s guitarist JW shines a light on his favorite under-the-radar acts. “We’re about to go on tour with a short stint in mainland Europe as well as various UK dates over the next couple of months. Heres a playlist of bands were excited to play with on these dates. As part of the tour, were doing a couple of two-night residencies at The White Hotel in Salford and at our favourite venue and second home the Brudenell Social Club—were curating the line-up for both of these shows, so heres a collection of my favorite songs by those artists. Theres a bonus Virginia Wing track as theyre kindly supporting us on all UK dates—Merida and Chris from Virginia Wing both played on Microshift, too.”

In May 2017, Indiana’s foremost jangly dream-pop outfit, Hoops, released their first proper, studio-recorded album, Routines, after years of putting out music on lo-fi, limited-edition cassettes. Those early releases will be issued on November 10 through Fat Possum as Tapes #1-3 —and while the band were getting all misty-eyed over their home-recording roots, we got them to make us a mix of favorite songs they first encountered on cruddy bargain-bin cassettes.“This is a collection of songs that we really like, most of which we discovered from cassettes found at Goodwills and record shops around where we’re from. This is all stuff that we play in the van and at parties, basically, whenever we get the chance. It’s all pretty representative of where we draw the most influence from when it comes to our own music. We highly recommend these tracks, but also the deeper cuts that come from their respective albums. Cassettes for us have always been a really easy and fun way to discover, listen to, and even put out music over the years.”—Hoops

Though best known for their respective work with dream-pop deities Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine, Hope Sandoval and Colm O’Cíosóig have been collaborators in Sandoval’s other band—rootsy psych-soul ensemble The Warm Inventions—since 2001. On the heels of their recent EP, Son of a Lady, the duo have created a playlist for The Dowsers that they’ve named “Significants.” Let them explain: "This playlist is a fine example of all the different personalities that we surround ourselves with for happy and sad times."—Hope Sandoval and Colm O’CíosóigNote: the duo submitted their playlist to The Dowsers via YouTube, and it included a couple of film clips and live TV appearances that can’t be sourced on Spotify. The playlist above includes the original recorded versions of their song selections but, for the full sensory experience, check out their original YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9XyMo8AghUqyjQOycYDzyp-0KYSmVLlw

Whats This Playlist All About? The Danish noise punks rise back up to the surface after four years of silence with a new single—the scuzzy, sludgy saga "Catch It"—and some inspirations in the form of “luxurious rockers, serenades, howlers, and cruisers."What Do You Get? Bookending the set with two of their own moody doozies, Iceage take several left turns here. Karen Daltons haunting banjo-pickin’ sidles up next to T. Rexs sax-kissed glam rock, CANs funkiest groove, and heady avant-garde journeys from artists like Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra. Still, each song has its own strangeness—and timelessness—that somehow connects them all.Greatest Discovery: The slithery, nimble guitar layers and urgent rhythms of "Feeling High" from Japanese psych-rockers Les Rallizes Denudes.Whats the Best Way to Listen to This Playlist? Lying on your bed, headphones secured, lights off, lava lamp flowing, slightly dazed and confused.

Like R&B, indie rock is a genre whose current iteration bears zero aesthetic relation to its original incarnation. In fact, indie rock holds the rare distinction of being perhaps the only genre that has gradually mutated into the complete ideological inverse of everything it once stood for, while still retaining its name. As an alternately tuneful and experimental offshoot of hardcore, indie rock began as a fuzz-blasted assault on both the sleek veneer and materialist values of glossy 80s mainstream pop, but these days, its sometimes difficult to tell the difference between modern indie rock and the smooth sounds emanating from your parents favorite Lite-FM station. So how the hell did we get from the circle-pit fury of Black Flag to the artful adult-contemporary pop of Bon Iver? This playlist attempts to chart a linear, song-by-song course through three and a half decades of knotty aesthetic evolutions.Each track here is a link in a chain, one that built upon the innovations of its immediate predecessor and subtly pushed the ball forward into new directions. The leap from the snow-blind squall of early Dinosaur Jr. to the delicate pop of Elliott Smith isn’t quite so dramatic when you consider the ways Pavement, Sebadoh, and Guided by Voices squeezed melody from noise in the interim. And likewise, the chasm between the orchestral pomp of Arcade Fire and the gleaming synth-pop of M83 seems less daunting when you look at how bands like Animal Collective and Dirty Projectors melted down indie rock’s molecular structure with digital textures and R&B beats.These days, the term "indie rock" has effectively been rendered meaningless on both a musical and philosophical level, given that once-rigid aesthetic divisions have dissolved and every artist on the totem pole is now a slave to streaming stats. So let this playlist serve as a lifeline and anchor to an era when a band could really be your life, and not just an algorithm-generated background soundtrack to one.

Valentine’s Day can be a tricky affair, but when it comes down to it, no roses, chocolates, or wining and dining can compare with how you set the mood once you make it to the bedroom. If your special someone finds comfort in the woozy romanticism of James Blake or the lush surreality of Beach House, you may want to casually flip this playlist on. Clocking in at just over an hour, it’s got a little bit of old and new as it eases into its seductive spell with the sexy skulk of FKA twigs and Massive Attack, then gets straight to the point with Lana Del Rey’s silky confession “Fuck it I love you” and Billie Eilish’s hesitant heart-tugger “i love you.” Just before the mood gets too serious, though, we kick back into a throbbing groove with The xx, Caribou, and Four Tet, wrapping it all up with a wistful indie lover’s anthem that offers up the most apt of final words: “I like it all that way.”

Though the term is tossed around a lot, there’s really no such thing as a “one-hit wonder.” If the criteria were simply having one Top 40 Billboard hit, then blink-182, Gorillaz, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix would all be considered one-hit wonders. Even artists that produce only one successful single can have a profound musical impact beyond that song. And there must be at least one power-pop enthusiast out there who knows every Fountains of Wayne song—or at least one besides “Stacy’s Mom”—by heart. Still, we all know what the term “one-hit wonder” generally implies. It’s an artist that produces one massively popular song that completely overshadows all other aspects of their career, whether it lasts for one album or several decades.This playlist consists of one-hit wonders in the post-millennial indie-pop realm. The majority of these groups adhere to the strict definition of the term, having produced at least one single that landed in the Billboard Top 40 charts. But researching this playlist yielded some surprises about artists that I incorrectly assumed only had one recognizable song. Foster the People has actually had a bunch of hit singles, though only “Pumped Up Kicks” has reached No. 1. Noah and the Whale has had several songs chart in the UK, but “5 Years Time” is the only song that resonated elsewhere. Of Monsters and Men has had other successful singles, but “Little Talks” is the only one that has breached the Billboard Top 40. And The Ting Tings were going to be included on this list, until Wikipedia informed me that the band actually had a handful of other singles that charted in the US besides “That’s Not My Name.”Aside from Fountains of Wayne, the most obvious one-hit wonder on this playlist is Gotye. “Somebody That I Used To Know” was a huge No. 1 hit in at least 10 countries, and is likely stuck in your head now that you’ve read its name. But does anyone even remember “Eyes Wide Open,” Gotye’s single released before “Somebody That I Used To Know,” and his only other song to chart in the US?The truth is that someone out there definitely knows that song, and also considers a few other Gotye songs “personal hits” to them the same way, say, Louis XIV’s “Finding Out True Love Is Blind” is to me—it may never have been a literal chart hit, but it was a smash single in my heart. That’s the tricky thing about calling artists one-hit wonders: They never truly are. In the world of indie-pop, however, that distinction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not having hit songs gives you more cred, anyways.

This playlist collects new music that The Dowsers’ Maura Johnston has fallen for in her workaday life as a music writer and her semi-professional life as a DJ for WZBC, Boston Colleges independent radio station.One of the most pleasant surprises of 2017 has been my personal rediscovery of a few labels that began putting out high-octane indie pop decades ago, and continue to release sweetly catchy records today. Elefant Records out of Madrid has been plying its wares since 1989, and La Bien Querida, the project of Bilbao-born Ana Fernández-Villaverde, hits all the high spots of the genre on "El Lado Bueno"—warm opening chords, hooks that split the difference between agitated guitar pop and hopping synth pop, Fernández-Villaverdes assured vocal serving as a guide. Matinée Recordings, which launched in 1997, is still at it as well; their high-quality roster of artists includes The Last Leaves, whose lineup includes three-fourths of the beloved Australian outfit The Lucksmiths and whose debut single is made for long walks in autumns fading daylight. This months slate of songs is full of delights from new artists (Chicagos Varsity, Los Angeles Blushh) as well as super-confident statements from veterans like Julie Doiron (of Erics Trip) and Beck.