The rise of Hiatus Kaiyote, the Melbourne-based ensemble whose blend of jazz fusion and downtempo earned a 2016 Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance, has drawn attention toward the Down Under’s unlikely hotbed of post-millennial soul. Some of the acts on our survey hail from Australia, while others come from nearby New Zealand. But all hew to the kind of cool, urbane, and hip-hop inflected beats that have thrived in underground music circles since the early ‘00s. Onetime Disclosure collaborator Jordan Rakei is earning acclaim for his Cloak debut, New Zealand duo Electric Wire Hustle is a familiar Okayplayer and Soulection favorite, and Ngaiire just released an album on Sony Music Australia.
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:
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
