Indie

Australian singer Juanita Stein has fronted the acclaimed rock-noir outfit Howling Bells since 2004. She releases her rootsy debut solo album, America, on July 28, 2017. To mark the occasion, shes produced this special playlist for The Dowsers of her favorite acts from Down Under. Here, Juanita explains what unites her selections: "Dirty and desolate: Aussie artists have a knack for beautifully capturing the dust settling, whether it be the psychedelic grit of King Gizzard or the delicate twilight of Julia Jacklin. These songs best capture my love of recent and (some) classic Australian bands."Watch the video for Juanita Steins recent single, "Dark Horse," here:

Kelcey Ayer is best known as the keyboardist and vocalist for L.A. indie-rock institution Local Natives, and on Sept. 22, he released his debut solo effort as Jaws of Love., titled Tasha Sits Close to the Piano. For his Dowsers playlist, he’s taking the opportunity to play catch-up on all the great music that came out last month—this is his “September Past, Present, and Future Friends’ Playlist.”“I was trying to think of an idea for this playlist and it occurred to me how difficult it can be doing what we do, and how it seems that playlists are becoming the go-to for getting music heard. We’re trying to get our music out there to the world, but with all the noise, its pretty fucking tough. I just released my solo project, and with all the feelings its bringing up from baring my insides to everyone, I could use some connection. So I thought fuck it, Im gonna hook it up! I love the idea of more community than less in the music world, so this is a playlist of either friends of mine, artists Ive always held in high regard, or new ones who I hope to have a beer with one day, whove released albums in September of 2017. So happy I did this too—it led me to so many awesome albums I missed. Enjoy!"—Kelcey Ayer

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Chicago’s underground has been on fire the past few years. Every other week seems to deliver a new batch of releases from the Hausu Mountain label, purveyors of madcap electronics and cyborg-bopping eccentricity. The shadowy Beau Wanzer, whose icy and forlorn productions disintegrate the divide between post-punk and techno, is nearly as prolific—and that’s just one dude. And then there’s Jaime Fennelly’s always progressing Mind Over Mirrors project: his latest album, the critically lauded Undying Color, wanders dense, rippling expanses of pastoral art folk and baroque électronique.Of course, “underground” means a lot of different things to a lot of different heads. For denizens of the city’s thriving avant-garde jazz and hardcore punk scenes, it conjures up a significantly different cluster of artists. So for this playlist, we focus primarily on musicians, bands, and oddball geniuses who stalk the back alleys, linking DIY electronics, industrial, droning experimentation, and mutant dance music. At first blush they may seem too far apart to link, but in Chicago, where musicians from different disciplines have always mingled freely, the overlap between them is substantial.This idea is reflected in the growing catalog of Midwich Productions, a label specializing in “electronic music from the urban wilderness of the Midwest.” Founded by longtime resident and musician Jim Magas, it’s home to both HIDE (pictured at top), who unleash mechanized nightmares that carry forward the city’s electro-industrial tradition, and Alex Barnett, a composer whose quirky, bubbling pieces ooze a cozy sense of nostalgia for ’70s synthesizer music.As you can probably guess, a lot of this music gets awfully weird—Fire-Toolz’s collision of boom-box EDM and grindcore rasp makes zero sense. Yet a good deal of it is deeply beautiful: Quicksails, an alias for multi-instrumentalist Ben Billington, crafts flickering avant-pop that bridges DIY electronics with the city’s deep reverence for jazz and free improv. It’s music that could only come from Chicago.

Whats This Playlist All About? In preparation for the release of their fifth studio album, 2018s All Nerve, Breeders boss Kim Deal schools us on her influential bands most influential tracks.What Do You Get? Before 90 alt-rock essential "Cannonball," Deal deals us a trio of newbies from All Nerve, including the grit-and-syrup-flavored single "Wait in the Car." Elsewhere, you’ll find the bands moodier escapes in "Off You" and "Night of Joy," noisier dalliances in "Roi" and “Glorious," and, of course, their woozy, punky rendition of "Happiness is a Warm Gun."What Did She Forget? In favor of the new stuff, Deal omits some quality gems from their 1990 debut, Pod, like the loose, wild, fiercely feminine "Iris."Should This Be Required Listening for All High-School Students? Yes. Every teen needs this kind of cathartic noise in their life.

Toronto-based jangle-punk combo Kiwi jr.’s debut album, Football Money, received a U.S. release in January 2020, mere weeks before the world was forced into hibernation by the COVID-19 virus. But if they can’t hit the road this year, the least they can do is relive past gig glories through this playlist of “people we have played with and hung out with and admire.” Their selections double as a pocket history of Canadian indie rock, spanning defunct ’90s icons (Thrush Hermit), dogged veterans (The Sadies, Fucked Up), unsung local heroes (Jim Guthrie, Daniel Romano), like-minded contemporaries (Nap Eyes), and a certain big-deal alt-pop group with whom they share a member (Alvvays). But the playlist is also a testament to Kiwi jr.’s rising cachet in the Toronto scene and their ability to score prime opening slots for visiting buzz bands like Aussie wonders Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Detroit singer/songwriter Stef Chura, and Brooklyn art-punk dynamos BODEGA.

It’s becoming increasingly common practice for an artist to post an original playlist to their Spotify page in the run-up to a new album. It’s a canny strategy: Throw a few tracks together then sit back as the mix gains followers, who then become a readymade audience when the record comes out. The original-playlist promotional gambit is just the latest new marketing tactic in an industry defined by them: Last week’s record club becomes this week’s free mp3 download becomes next week’s Twitter Takeover, and so on. Thus, for every three perfunctory artist playlists that show up on Spotify pages these days, there’s one stand-out entry, a mix put together with extra TLC that both stands on its own and complements the album being released. Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile’s “Lotta Duets” playlist is just such a mix. Honestly, this thing rules. Compiled to accompany the duo’s debut collaborative full-length, Lotta Sea Lice, “Lotta Duets” is a who’s-who of classic pairings: George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. The mix spans genres and eras. Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream,” as virtuosic an example of streamlined ‘80s pop as any that exists (it was written by the Bee Gees, btw), is flanked by the gentle folk of “Early Morning Rain,” by Canadian duo Ian & Sylvia, and “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a collaboration between George Michael and Aretha Franklin. While the indulgent production of the latter track bears little resemblance to anything on Lotta Sea Lice, its inclusion feels consistent with Vile and Barnett’s penchant for winking references. Many of the tracks on the playlist are more obviously influential, as in the fuzzed-out indie pop of The Vaselines’ “Son Of A Gun,” the saccharine crunch of Iggy Pop’s “Candy” (featuring Kate Pierson of The B-52s), the snarling grooves of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. If you were to melt all these tracks down, what you’d have is a winsome, sturdy, occasionally nostalgic, occasionally cheeky rock sound anchored in the past but with some modern flourishes—in other words, exactly the sound of Lotta Sea Lice. That’s a pretty neat trick.

I don’t have the analytics to prove it, but my gut tells me that not a whole lot of folks outside of gnarly hardcore punks fuck with British label La Vida Es Un Mus. Which is somewhat understandable, seeing as how the scene is something of a subcultural island, one perfectly comfortable with not trying to amass converts. But still, more weird-ears should be tuning to the London-based label, founded back in 1999, as they’ve been unleashing some of the year’s toughest and most engaging records not just in hardcore but across the DIY spectrum. Via a steady stream of releases, the label’s founder, Paco Mus (who it should be noted cares nothing for press attention), has expanded the parameters of hardcore punk to include all manner of underground hybrids. From repressing Aussie post-punks Constant Mongrel’s Living in Excellence—an album packed with suffocating riff-smudge, political unrest, and mutant sax screech—to releasing Spanish band Rata Negra’s Justicia Cósmica, buzzing melodic punk flaked with new wave synth-action.LVEUM are decidedly globally-minded. Of the roughly 20 full-lengths, cassettes, and singles dropped in 2018 (frantic pace, right?) they managed to chronicle thriving underground scenes in Singapore (Sial’s throttling Binasa EP), Australia (Priors’ flailing eponymously titled full-length), and the good, old United Kingdom (Snob’s irrepressibly eccentric self-titled slab). At a time when nationalism and xenophobia rip across the West, LVEUM’s championing of anti-establishment music and grassroots community from around the world doesn’t just feel refreshing but downright necessary. When digging into our playlist you’ll encounter tons of tracks from La Vida Es Un Mus’s 2018 releases, but you’ll also hear a smattering of older stuff (vital reissue-work included) from the imprint’s most beloved bands, like Es, Nailbiter, and the mighty Limp Wrist, who have been pivotal figures in the modern queercore movement. Press play and be prepared to trash shit Paris-style.

Subscribe to this playlist here.On “Suzanne,” the first song from Leonard Cohen’s debut album, Cohen positions Jesus Christ as a “broken” and “forsaken” figure who watches “drowning men” from a “lonely wood tower.” Cohen’s messiah is a cypher for longing and solitude — a totem for the lovesick and desperate. As a metaphor, it might seem bizarre, or even blasphemous, but twisting the sacred and profane into odd, interloping configurations became Cohen’s modus operandi for the next five decades. His most famous composition, “Hallelujah,” refashions the biblical story of David and Bathsheba into a tale of sexual obsession and, ultimately, spiritual transcendence; while the late-period classic “Show Me the Way” is a meditation on mortality that is addressed to either a savior or a dominatrix (or maybe both). For Cohen, faith is a complicated thing, but it’s ultimately humanistic and forgiving; it doesn’t seek to judge the transgressions of the sinner as much it attempts to understand our failures by chipping away at our ideals of divinity. It interjects tragedy into the holy order, and adds a whiff of squalor to the sacred spaces. It bridges the gap between heaven and earth. -- Sam Chennault

On April 10 of this year, Ben McOsker announced that Load Records—after nearly a quarter-century of contorting brains—is closing up shop. To describe the underground rock and noise label’s run as stellar is a gross understatement. Few imprints that document the fringes of sound have released even half the amount of genre-defining albums that McOsker and his partner in crime Laura Mullen have: Lightning Bolt’s Ride the Skies, Sightings’ Absolutes, The USA IS A Monster’s Tasheyana Compost, Yellow Swans’ At All Ends—the list goes on. These aren’t just amazing records, they’re seeds that filtered out into the world and helped spawn a global noise movement that came to a screeching climax in the ’00s. To put Load’s legacy in its proper context, you’d have to reach back to the glory years of Touch and Go or Amphetamine Reptile for an apt comparison—though, truth be told, neither label ever ventured as far out sonically as Load.Founded in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1993, Load served as the primary outlet for the unique mix of local greaser punks and art-school transplants inhabiting the city’s sprawling underground. Lightning Bolt are the most popular of the Providence outfits, but Load also released critical titles from Olneyville Sound System, Thee Hydrogen Terrors, Pleasurehorse, Kites, Prurient, and The Human Beast. McOsker and Mullen also looked far beyond the city’s limits: By the mid-’00s, they were unleashing music from artists as far flung as New York City (Sightings, Excepter, The USA IS A Monster), Ohio (Sword Heaven, Homostupids), San Francisco (Total Shutdown, The Hospitals), and Norway (Noxagt, Ultralyd).Beyond its consistently excellent output, Load pushed the limits of what an independent record label could get away with while continuing to remain commercially viable. Most imprints—however freaky, cacophonous, and anarchic—that get a taste of success tend to begin playing it safe, opting to release records that rarely venture beyond what’s already proven to be popular. But, possessing a deep love for trickster spirit-like unpredictability, Load actually got stranger the more units it sold. How else do you explain the existence of the Hawd Gankstuh Rappuhs MCs (Wid Ghatz)’s Wake Up and Smell the Piss, a descent into perverted, excrement-obsessed, lo-fi noise-hop that probably sold no more than a dozen copies? This record even confused Load’s most hardcore fans.But by unleashing such wildly uncommercial music alongside proven sellers like Lightning Bolt, Load helped give a much larger platform to genius musicians who are way too left field and individualistic for even the indie rock marketplace. For that, Load deserves some kind of cultural service award. Thank you, Ben and Laura!Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Ultimately, sadcore is more about a feeling than a specific sound, and, as you probably guessed from the name, that feeling is not exactly a bright, uplifting one. Some trace its origins back to the gloomy glower of British bands like The Smiths or even The Cure, but sadcore didn’t really cohere as a genre (movement would imply too much action on the part of its melancholia-afflicted practitioners) until U.S. indie bands like Galaxie 500 came along in the late ‘80s. Though virtually none of the artists to whom the tag has been applied would ever actually own up to coming under the sadcore banner, over the years the description has been applied to everything from the lacerating self-effacement of alt-rock heroes American Music Club to the muted musings of Cat Power. But whichever way you slice it, sadcore is the sound indie obsessives turn to when the sunny side of things doesn’t strike you quite right.