Weird Nightmare will release “Hoopla,” the engaging and melodic second LP from former METZ frontman Alex Edkins, on May 1st!

Every band worth its salt has a member who worked in a record store. In METZ, the fearless noise rock trio who released five full-length albums on Sub Pop between 2012 and 2024, it was singer and guitarist Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records in his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll; from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. The new Weird Nightmare album “Hoopla,” mixes and matches these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind. Bursting to life with hooks and earworms.

Co–produced by Edkins and Spoon’s Jim Eno at Seth Manchester’s Machines With Magnets in Providence, RI. Edkins expands Weird Nightmare’s dimensions to new heights, gilding the direct emotions of his straightforward songwriting with musical textures such as piano, bells, and castanets, giving these well-wrought tunes a shiny luster.

“‘Might See You There’ is about going back to visit my hometown and being flooded with teenage nostalgia. Small-town boredom and isolation almost feel like a gift in today’s highly connected world. I feel fortunate for that time spent idly, down in the basement, learning the entire Rancid ‘Let’s Go’ album on guitar with my friends. I find it easy to romanticise that time in my life, even though I was, without question, a disgruntled kid who badly wanted to escape my surroundings and see the world.” —Alex Edkins

Listen: Weird Nightmare – “Might See You There”

Weird Nightmare – “Might See You There”

Amiture Music’s self-titled debut is a confluence of abrasive power and precision. Expanding and contracting, patterned by driving distortion and pockets of light. We’re very excited to deliver to radio the first taste off it in “Mountain”—it exemplifies the Brooklyn band’s penchant for multi-layered arrangements, forming a dynamic sonic landscape that shifts from heady avant-garde to ol’ fashioned, thrashing rock’n’roll.

Like their forthcoming album, this song has plenty of grit without sacrificing melody.

“designed for you to mosh with your shadows” – Pitchfork

“from genre splicing into something standalone and eminently replayable” – TheFADER 

Amiture Music’s Jack Whitescarver sings with a romantic flair that gestures towards heaven without leaving the body behind.

While recording their self-titled debut (out 3/20 on Dots Per Inch), songwriter/bandleader Whitescarver watched Wim Wenders’ Notebook on Cities and Clothes, a documentary on the work of fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. It was his animating contradiction of ‘new enough’ and ‘classic forever’ that directed the making of Amiture Music.

Experimental music is playful at its core—a venturing out that is necessarily optimistic in its belief in the potential goodness of the new. For Whitescarver, this ‘play’ is rooted in a pursuit of beauty in the unlikely site of rock music—particularly within the genre’s angularity and deconstructive tendencies. Underneath the hard edge, there is a coy expression of query that animates his process. On Amiture Music, such adventure had to be balanced with getting-the-feeling-across.

Whitescarver began making dark, synth-heavy pop as Amiture in 2018, releasing “The Beach” (2021) before pivoting to the experimental trip-hop of “Mother Engine” (2024). Drummer Justin Fossella, bassist Max Berine Shafer, and multi-instrumental Allie Wrubel joined Whitescarver later in 2024, and the project blossomed in character and scope from textured experiments in songwriting and genre into a fully-fledged band, Amiture Music.

With this new name comes a move toward a collectivist approach. No longer just Whitescarver, Amiture Music is the sum of its parts, four distinct perspectives working in tandem to write adventurous yet accessible songs that are based on a shared belief in using dissonance to transcend rather than transgress.

Listen: Amiture – “Mountain”

Amiture – “Mountain”

The triumphant return of Kiwi Jr. comes in “Hard Drive, Ontario,” and we’re excited to deliver to you the Toronto band’s first new music since 2022! It’s perhaps their weirdest, catchiest, and best song yet!

“The idea for the lyric came when I saw a wifi password on the side of a barn off a dirt road somewhere. It’s about how you can’t quit and restart somewhere else anymore, and how locked in we all are by the internet, even way out in the country.  It tells the story of some young people trying to live a fantasy old country life, sort of city slickers cosplaying as hillbillies, but then it turns into a horror movie at the end when they run out of gas and meet some bad people out on the road.”  — Jeremy Gaudet (Kiwi Jr.’s singer/guitarist)

“Kiwi Jr. are doing this kind of music better than just about anybody right now…Gaudet and the rest of the band justify their standing amongst their influences” – PASTE

“While stopping short of a full-blown synth-pop makeover, ‘Chopper’ slathers on enough neon-tinted textures to reorient Kiwi Jr. away from the jangle-rock canon and toward the futurist power-pop of the Cars, New Pornographers, and the Strokes circa Room on Fire.” – Pitchfork

“Kiwi Jr bring a darker edge to their poppy, indie rock style on their terrific third album.” – Brooklyn Vegan (Album Of The Week)

“walks a tightrope between melancholy and whimsy, between sincerity and irony…strikes atonal balance that’s all the more compelling for being so precarious, as though a wrong note or misplaced lyric might send a song spiraling into facetiousness.” – Uncut

“Gaudet’s hyper-absurdist approach to songwriting is both sharper and more abstruse than ever.”  – MOJO

Refracting the realities of late-capitalist city life and the impossibility of work-art balance in a high-rent metropolis through satire and sarcasm, Toronto’s Kiwi Jr. has shaped their own deadpan postmodern indie rock. Their third album, Chopper, overseen by producer Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade) was released on Sub Pop Records in 2022.

Kiwi Jr have toured in 13 countries and opened up for Pavement, The Walkmen, Dinosaur Jr, Guided By Voices, The Lemonheads, Frank Black, Islands, Fucked Up, Sloan, New Pornographers, Cloud Nothings and Protomartyr. They are currently at work on their fourth album.  It’s a doozy.

Listen: Kiwi Jr. – “Hard Drive Ontario” (clean radio edit)

Kiwi Jr. – “Hard Drive Ontario” (clean radio edit)

SPRINTS‘ sophomore effort, “All That Is Over,” is a remarkable second effort that pushes the band’s dynamics into richer territory, finding new space and nuance while also going harder than ever.

Written on tour buses, in soundchecks, and very much in real time, it’s an album set against the backdrop of a litany of atrocities – the war in Gaza, the wildfires in LA, Trump’s executive order denying the rights of trans people – that sees SPRINTS trying to make sense of a society gone mad. The 11-track long player features the standout singles, “Descartes,” “Rage,” “Beg,” and “Better,” and was produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band at La Frette studio outside of Paris.

Since the SPRINTS‘ inception, they have established a name for themselves, crafting a ferocious live show that echoes the band’s recorded sound, equal parts raw and refined, catapulting listeners into controlled chaos.

Directed by Niamh Bryson, “Better” is a song that “sounds like a love song but definitely isn’t,” shares frontperson Karla Chubb. “It explores the idea not of liking someone better, but only liking them when they’re better. It’s tough, sad, but honest and frank. It’s an old demo that was brought back in conversation by Sam and backed by Zac. It’s inspired quite heavily by MBV, especially the Loveless album, and has touches of Big Dreams by Amyl and the Sniffers.”

SPRINTS will visit America with a headline run in early 2026 (see our Tours page for more)!

Listen: Sprints – “Rage”

Sprints – “Rage”

It’s Finally Here! Nation of Language have released their fourth album and full-length Sub Pop debut “Dance Called Memory!” Synthpop, minimal wave, post-punk, goth, new romantic — fans and critics alike have dug deeply into their vintage thesauruses to describe the beguiling work of the Brooklyn trio. And if you can’t precisely define the band, that’s the point. Current breakout radio single “Inept Apollo” is Now followed by focus “I’m Not Ready for the Change”!

Nation of Language frontman Ian Richard Devaney has become prodigious in expanding what synthesizer-driven music can evoke, such that his output is as much an extrasensory journey as it is an all-too-human destination. With that experience in mind, he wrote the band’s fourth album — the spectral, spacious 10-track “Dance Called Memory”— in the most humble of ways: chipping away at melancholia by sitting around and strumming his guitar.

On the new album Nation of Language once again collaborated with friend and returning producer and collaborator Nick Millhiser (LCD Soundsystem, Holy Ghost!). “What’s so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don’t need to do what might be expected of us,” says synth player Aidan Noell, who, along with bassist Alex MacKay, rounds out the Nation of Language lineup. They imbued the new album with a shifted palette — for example, smashing all of the percussion of “In Another Life” through a synthesizer to cast a shade of early-2000s electronic music or by sampling chopped-up drum breaks on “I’m Not Ready for the Change,” for a touch of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine.

Ultimately, the trio’s hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. “As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought,” Devaney says. “In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators I’m focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that… Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”

Nation of Language’s first three albums, “Introduction, Presence” (2020), “A Way Forward” (2021), and “Strange Disciple” (2023) came as pandemic-era godsends: gorgeous, relatable soundtracks to our collective doldrums.

Listen: Nation Of Language – “I’m Not Ready For The Change” (radio edit)

Nation Of Language – “I’m Not Ready For The Change” (radio edit)

Following a fantastic run of weeks in a row Top 5 SubModern singles with the indie rock powerhouse’s last “Green Light,” new music specialty show faves Child Seat unleash and ode to something we All know well… “STRESS.” The urgent new reveal off their upcoming third album is a restless, grooving, and bass-driven move, tailor-made for screaming at full volume when you’re, well….you guessed it!

“The song is about how every time it feels like you’re getting ahead in life suddenly, life pulls you back 3 steps back. It often feels like I can never get ahead because of all of the obstacles – and even when things are going right you question if this is what you want at all.. Which ends up just adding on the anxiety! It truly feels like my life and mind never get a break – so I wanted to sing a song where I could just get my stress out.” —Child Seat’s Madeleine Mathews

With its genre-bending DNA, “Stress” feels like a new venture for Child Seat, but still has its familiar flair. The LA duo has been pumping out songs since 2022 (formed in 2021), with Mathews’ powerhouse vocals, recalling Brittany Howard and Karen O, colliding with Mazzaschi’s kaleidoscopic production, mixing indie grit with bold, unexpected turns.

The band is gearing up for opening for a NYE show with Fountains of Wayne in Chicago, and has just recently seen huge success online with their songs “Hyperphantasia” and their cover of “Urgent” by Foreigner gaining virality and garnering the band hundreds of thousands of views and over 34k+ new followers.

Known for high-voltage live shows, Child Seat has already shared stages with The Regrettes, appeared at SXSW, and earned spins across KCRW, SiriusXM, and KROQ. Their recent albums have featured artists like Jeff Schroeder of the Smashing Pumpkins, Jon Button on bass (The Who) and Nancy Kuo on violin (Courtney Love, Linda Perry, H.E.R., Allison Mosshart, Megan Thee Stallion) and Ron Dziubla on saxophone (Jon Batiste).

Child Seat encompasses both Mathews and Mazzaschi’s strengths. Mazzaschi has over 20+ years of success recording and producing artists like The Jesus and the Mary Chain, The Smashing Pumpkins, Deap Vally, Built to Spill, Rilo Kiley and more, as well as writing/performing for his own projects; Light FM and Bizou. Mathews, who has fronted and written for numerous bands as well has won songwriting competitions, is defined by her unique vocal styling and powerful lyricism.

Listen: Child Seat – “Stress”

Child Seat – “Stress”

With his debut album “Windser,” Santa Cruz born, LA-based artist Jordan Topf plants a Bold emotional flag, and balances anthemic hooks with deeply human storytelling. The new single “Lose You” has just gone full time on SiriusXM’s ALT Nation (check it out below)!

“With this collection of songs I wanted to document my own personal experience with relationships, finding clarity, and moving forward from past trauma. Letting go of things that were once too overwhelming to feel. I was thinking a lot about relationships. The traits we learn/inherit from our families. I avoided making the album a trauma dump, so it’s more of me using these songs as a means of coping with my own strange reality. During this snapshot of time I allowed myself to feel openly and truthfully. I allowed myself to feel like I didn’t have to put those past relationships on some sort of perpetual pedestal anymore. The fogged lens could be wiped clean from the dashboard and seen in broad daylight. There’s also a sense of hope. Hope for love, playfulness, happiness, and healing.” — Jordan Topf (Windser)

“Lose You” is a soaring and propulsive anthem that sees Windser grappling with the final moments of a fading love. Over a driving post-punk shuffle and falsetto lines, Topf pleads to hold on just a little longer. Co-written with Day Wave frontman Jackson Phillips, “Lose You” unlocks one of the album’s most cathartic moments.

In addition to the searing and deeply personal “Abandon,” which reflects on childhood trauma and emotional disconnection; the dreamy “Shut Up and Kiss Me,” written as a tender ode to Topf’s wife; the album also features and was preceded by the incredibly catchy and emotionally raw “These Days,” in which Topf sings “I’m so bored / I’m depressed / I’m a mess / These days” before launching into a hook that lands like a gut punch and lingers long after the final chorus.

Produced by Topf alongside Jon Gilbert (flipturn, Mt. Joy) and Matias Tellez (Girl in Red), the record includes contributions from Jerry Borgé (Lucinda Williams), Daniel Rhine (Phoebe Bridgers), and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty). It arrives following a steady climb through indie and alt circles: Topf’s nostalgic 2023 single “Memory” peaked at #5 on SiriusXM’s Alt Nation and spent 18 weeks on the chart, while his collaborations with Macklemore (“Maniac” and “Next Year”) led to performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show, and Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve. He’s also played major festivals including Lollapalooza and BottleRock.

Listen: Windser – “Lose You”

Windser – “Lose You”