Elliott Dunstan

Tag: indie music

Genrefvckery: New Music Round-Up April 2025 (Super Late Edition)

October 28th, 2025
Hello everyone! This is *checks calendar* a rather stunning six months late. At this point I’m just rolling with it — but the nice thing is that these are songs that have now long slipped off the discovery queue for Bandcamp or Spotify. So I’m actually quite happy to bring them to people a few months later. (Is that an excuse? Maybe. Am I also right? Could be!)

I am one song sort this time round, but I’m trying to worry less about that sort of thing. We’re already in the worst timeline. What’s doing nine instead of ten songs going to do?
1. We Lost The Sea — A Dance With Death
Post-rock instrumental outfit We Lost The Sea hail from Sydney, Australia and have had a number of hits, most notably the album Departure Songs; they are, however, new to me and this particular song has embedded itself into my brain with remarkable persistence. This is one of two singles from album A Single Flower, which released July 2nd!

The song is a powerful 10 minutes and 22 seconds. If you’re a post-rock aficionado, that’s only slightly on the long end of standard (looking at you, Godspeed) but if you’re wandering in from the R&B or punk world, you might be a little intimidated by that — but even for a post-rock song this is a shockingly dynamic piece. It’s dark, moody, but above all driving — it’s never standing too still in one place, making less a wall of sound and more a river.

Check out the full album on Bandcamp here!

2. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Deadstick

This is another band that I think I should have run into before now; they’re apparently quite well known in alt circles, but I guess the question is which alt circles! Anyway, this is the most cheerful up-tempo song about a plane crash I’ve ever heard and part of me is clutching my pearls a little and the rest of me is having too much of a good time to worry. Deadstick was one of the early-release singles from the Phantom Island album which released earlier this month, and while I haven’t had the chance to listen to the rest of the album, this is a hell of a single.

As for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, they’re — another Australian band? Good god, what are y’all doing to your musicians over there? Australia seems to be the home of modern independent Alt Rock in all of its shapes and I’m jealous, frankly. (Except I’m trans and being trans in Australia is… well, it’s not great anywhere right now, but I’m keeping my ass in Canada.) These guys have been around since 2010, which is already a considerable pedigree for a band with this high energy, but they have — I’m fucking sorry, what? 28 albums? Also they have something called the Gizzverse for their concept albums and I’ll be right back y’all I need to listen to all of these albums in order and be incredibly autistic about it now.

The Phantom Island album can be enjoyed over here!

3. Powerplant – Chasing Cars

Here’s some good old crunchy lo-fi punk on the other end of the spectrum — Powerplant is from the UK, and this song sounds like it’s straight out of the 80s Batcave. The lyrics are evocative of the era too, particularly “I wanted love / Found my way to hell / At the depth of the wishing well” which is sticking in my brain like a hypodermic needle.

Powerplant started off as a solo project by Theo Zhykharyev (vocals), but he’s now joined by Cam Pickering (synth), Karim Newble (bass), and Lloyd Clipston (drums). Check out their work here!

4. Messa – Void Meridian

Not gonna lie — this whole damn album is fucking gold. Picking one track out of this was a little like pulling teeth, but I’m going with the opening track which has such an immediately captivating intro, and gorgeous vocals that remind me of Anneke van Giersbergen (The Gathering) or Cristina Scabbia (Lacuna Coil). Sara Bianchin is the vocalist of Messa, and her haunting voice is absolutely perfect for the kind of ambient doom metal that Messa is creating. This song (and album, really) also has pitch-perfect production and instrumentation. So many otherwise good metal albums are held back by poor mixing or the unfortunate barriers of good equipment just being expensive, but it’s nice to be able to just… sink into a song.

Messa has been around since 2014, and the rest of the band includes guitarist Alberto Piccolo, bassist Marco Zanin, and drummer Rocco Toald. This is their fourth album, and definitely takes cues from Black Sabbath and later symphonic/gothic metal greats, but it’s all their own. Give ‘Void Meridian’ a listen if you’re into this type of music — or even if you’re not! It’s not a screaming type of song if that puts you off, and you may just be surprised.

Listen to The Spin on Bandcamp here!

5. Deerhoof – Sparrow Sparrow

…Has Deerhoof really been around for over 30 years? The fuck? I remember first running into Deerhoof as a mention in Questionable Content, which is where I first got into indie music/culture. I have a lot of fond memories of poring through the comic archives for mentions of bands I’d never heard of before, and diving into their discographies with an eagerness I hadn’t felt for music before. With that in mind, this release is particularly exciting, because Deerhoof is fucking weird and always has been. A quartet of US and Japanese musicians, Bandcamp describes their music better than I possibly could as “some previously unknown combination of candy-coated hard-rock riffs and free-jazz percussive freakouts, sideways J-pop hooks and fearsome dissonance, trenchant social commentary and surrealist humor.”

Sparrow Sparrow also feels like a call-back to the first song I ever heard from them, the equally-bizarre Panda Panda (which is from 2003. God. I’m old. Leave me alone.) Sparrow Sparrow has more lyrics, though, and it’s just as much a musing on the state of the environment and the creatures that live on the earth with us as anything else, instead of the Dadaist repetition of the latter song. It takes a particular type of musical ear to appreciate Deerhoof, but if you have it, you’ll fuckin love this song.

Listen to Noble and Godlike In Ruin on Bandcamp here!

6. Smoky Song – Nezhiletz

Back to the darker end of things, here’s a fantastic dark-ambient piece from Nezhiletz, alter ego of musician Igor Zhukov from Sleetgrout. A little bit witch-house, a little bit lo-fi, definitely perfect for Hallowe’en season. (I definitely didn’t fall out of doing my round-ups again. Shhh. It’s still May. Don’t worry about it.)

Zhukov is surprisingly hard to find information on — although maybe not that surprising given the grassroots nature of the project. He’s from Eastern Europe, and uses Cyrillic as a variation of his handle (НЕЖИЛЕЦ) but beyond that, his Instagram (found here) is a lot of excellently cryptic posts about releases. I’m into it, honestly — and as much as I like going and looking for information about artists, I have full respect for those who play it close to the chest, especially for a project as odd and uncanny as this one.

Nezhiletz’s work is released through skyQode — check it out here! (Especially since the only Youtube version is that teaser — come listen to the full version!)

7. Ash Soan and Ariel Posen – GOTTA START SOMEWHERE

I love blues music. The blues are the framework for so many of our modern genres — everything from rock to punk to metal, to the R&B that’s changed the face of pop music. (There’s a whole other conversation to have, of course, about the gentrification of blues by white musicians — but that’s a complicated, macro issue.)

Nevertheless, this track from drummer Ash Soan and guitarist Ariel Posen is blues with the distortion alllll the way up where it should be. We’re talking grimy, funky, leave-your-head-buzzing drive and freestyling so smooth that one track blends beautifully into the next while still having very distinct rhythms and feelings. I’ve chosen GOTTA START SOMEWHERE as my favourite, but this whole album is amazing to listen to. Every track is short, and comes off as a recorded jam session in the best way — I’m sitting on my bed grooving to it and I woke up this morning exhausted.

Listen to the whole album here!

8. Fotoform – Grief Is A Garden

Shoegaze is one of those genres I didn’t realize I liked until someone explained it to me and I realized I listened to a lot of it. (It’s probably a candidate for one of the most non-indicative genre labels ever; I thought it was Dashboard Confessional bashful emo-boy stuff.) Anyway, after getting into shoegaze through Tiny Deaths and Deserta, I’ve been aching for some more, and Fotoform’s blend of shoegaze and Cocteau-Twins-style dream-pop is absolutely hitting the mark. “Grief is a Garden” is a song where I don’t even want to look up the lyrics — the emotion of the track carries me along anyway, sad and wistful and a little bit lonely even amongst all of its harmonic noise.

Of course, I did look them up, because I’m running a column here, not a vibe sesh. (Rich from the man who runs away from deadlines like he’s Deadpool on April Fool’s.) They’re attached to the single release of Grief Is A Garden, rather than the album, and they’re just as gorgeous as the music would have you believe. “Waves keep crashing/Unforeseen/Losing someone/Is never what it seems/I’ve been searching/All my life/Grief is a garden/Forever in bloom/Deep inside” Listen, I’m a sucker for songs about grief, so I’m gonna be chewing on these like mourning-flavoured bubblegum for a while.

Fotoform is based in Seattle, Washington, and is made up of Kim House (vocals, bass, synth, guitar) and Geoff Cox (guitar). Listen to the whole album here!

9. Ministry – Just Like You (Squirrelly Version)

Okay, so I’m breaking some of my own rules here. A bunch of them, actually. Usually, Ministry would be too big a name for me to put on here, and a remaster generally wouldn’t merit an entry. I rarely even do remixes!

However.

It’s my column. I can be biased. And more seriously – there are remasters, and then there are remasters. It feels like every band and their dog has been remastering or rerecording 20th and 30th anniversary versions lately, and it’s very nice and all, but especially as someone with hearing aids I can rarely hear a huge difference. (And of course there’s the odd remaster that absolutely destroys the quality.) Not so with Ministry. The original Twitch album, released 1986, came in the early days of synth and industrial music. The sounds are excellent, but a bit distant; the effect is almost as if looking through glass. Here’s the original “Just Like You” for contrast. It’s an incredibly influential album, even if unrecognized by some in the industrial scene — but it does show its age. And it’s incredible how much I didn’t even notice until Ministry, that little fucker, released the “Squirrelly Version”. (Look, I don’t know. Ask him. He probably won’t give you a straight answer.)

And HOLY SHIT. It’s like listening to a new song, even though everything is still where it’s supposed to be. It’s the difference between watching Terminator and getting run over by one of Skynet’s bulldozers. It’s excellent, it’s crisp, and as one of those Ministry fanboys who likes Twitch more than anything else, it’s like a present just for me! So, obviously, I’m going to make everybody else listen to it. What else is having a blog for?

That’s all for now, folks! If you want to get my columns early and help put some money in my pocket, I have a SubscribeStar over here. (It’s like Patreon, but less scummy.) You can also check me out on Bluesky at fivers_dream, Instagram under elliott_dunstan, or just chilling at a drag bar near you. (That’s a lie. I have zero chill.)
GENREFVCKERY: March 2025 Round-Up

April 8th, 2025
Welcome back everyone to — *checks my watch* Really? This one’s actually on fucking time? Holy shit. Anyway, this is the roundup for March’s new releases, posted in the second week of April, a.k.a. an actually appropriate time.
1. Child of the Earth – Lena Raine
We’re starting off with a Canadian artist (yay!) and a slightly sad backstory (aw.) Earthblade was a videogame announced by Extremely OK Games back in 2021, as a spiritual successor to Celeste. However, tragically, the game was cancelled in December 2024 for a myriad of reasons. Lena Raine, who was composing the music for the game, released what she deems more of a concept album than an OST early in March — and it’s a gorgeous collection of instrumentals that give the landscape of a game that will now never exist.

I don’t use ‘landscape’ lightly, either. The soundscape of this album is tremendous. I’ve listed specifically ‘Child of the Earth’ which has building minor-key synth and a crackling, rattling noise that starts chiming in about halfway through– deeply ominous without being too on the nose, and yet a little reminiscent of cicadas. But other tracks are just as excellent, and all with very different vibes from each other. ‘DEFY’ is a series of building chimes that are almost bubbly; and ‘Poison in the Roots’ is unsettling but pretty with distant background vocals and a steady, almost post-rock momentum to it as it grows. (Also out of all the tracks, ‘Poison in the Roots’ might be the one that makes me the most desperate to know what this game was about. Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaase.)

Check out Earthblade: Across The Bounds of Fate here — and 50% of proceeds go to Trans Lifeline!

2. Kaleidoscope – Vectorgeist

I am such a sucker for anything with a synth in it. It’s a problem. Except not really because listen to this shit!!! It slaps!!!! (Sorry, I left my professionalism in my other coat.) Vectorgeist is an experimental/synthpop musician living in Oregon, and this track is a preview for an album releasing later this year. More than that I cannot tell you. The mystery. It compels me so.

Anyway, like I said, this slaps. As usual, I dearly wish the lyrics were provided, but I also don’t feel their absence as keenly as I sometimes do — the vocals feel so smoothly integrated as part of the music. This is the kind of music I should be listening to while committing a cyberpunk heist in 2252 Tokyo.

Check out Vectorgeist here!

3. Ganymede by Lazy Pines

I’m not usually a love song person, but this sweet song by Lazy Pines is adorable on so, so many fronts. The lyrics are horny (and gay) but incredibly sincere in their longing — and the melody behind them is adapted from a piece of classical music, ‘Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity’ by Gustav Holst. It’s fascinating listening to the latter piece, which is performed with a lot of pomp and circumstance, and wondering how Lazy Pines got a sweet love song out of it — but it’s a very, very elegant piece of work. My one note is that the vocals and music don’t always blend as well as they could, but indie music comes with occasional imperfections in mixing — and that’s part of what makes it great.

Check out Ganymede by Lazy Pines here!

4. FURRY by Schtewee

Not to do a complete tonal whiplash here, but this song is on here just as much for the absolutely hysterical spite on display as for the actual music. It is, to be clear, a fun as hell song. It reminds me of the meme songs on Youtube of the Olden Days, which were always excellently crafted on top of being, well, funny.

I don’t know the backstory behind the song. All I know, from what’s on the Bandcamp page, is that someone or other pissed off Schtewee and — it would seem — claimed Schtewee didn’t count as a real furry. The result is two minutes and fifteen seconds that belong in Bojack Horseman, with fevered chanting of “FURRY FURRY FURRY FURRY” and “yip yip!” It’s fantastic. I’m not being ironic or sarcastic — I, unabashedly, hands down, love this. Except for the part where it’s stuck in my head and won’t leave. FURRY FURRY FURRY FURRY FURRY–

Check out FURRY by Schtewee here!

5. S.O.S. – Bella Bliss

This is one of two trans rage songs on here, and while they couldn’t be more different in terms of musical tone/form (they’re both technically metal, but that’s about as far as it goes), they’re both absolute primal screams of songs. For S.O.S., this is literal. Bella Bliss’s distorted, nightcore-styled vocals are barely discernable from the noisy, trap-static background, and it’s a good thing the lyrics are supplied because even with them, it’s impossible to make them out. And it’s perfect. It’s like trying to make out cries for help through a broken radio, but turned up to 15 — distressing, impossible to turn off, and amazingly proficient.

It’s almost a shame, even with the artistic coherency of it, that the lyrics are so hard to hear though — because they’re fantastic even on their own. “they can’t kill us in a way that matters/(you know this is an S.O.S.)/you can only live to see them die/(you know this is an S.O.S.)” is a banger of a chorus, and the rest is just as strong. Even more impressive — and I feel like I say this a lot, but it tells you something about the state of indie music versus the music industry — this is only Bella Bliss’s second official release. It’s all upwards from here.

Check out S.O.S. by Bella Bliss here!

6. C O W A R D S – Cameron Evesque Davis

There’s something deeply, endlessly compelling about the “spell it out” song, but it’s usually a pop construction. Between the bridge of The Best Damn Thing and Hot To Go coming with a cute dance, it’s not something I expect from industrial music – but Cameron Evesque Davis doesn’t give a shit. C O W A R D S is a targeted air strike right at the fuckers currently running at the U.S. and their cronies, right at where they’re the most sensitive — their egos. And it’s catchy, too. In a just world, this would be getting radio play, but wouldn’t want to offend the ears of the centrists, I guess.

Davis is based in Chicago and describes herself as creating an ‘eclectic mix of genres’, which is certainly one way to put it (one of her other fantastic songs is an industrial cover of ‘One Jump Ahead’ from Aladdin, which is now living rent free in my brain forever, goddammit) and that alone earns her a spot on here. She’s got a TON of music, too, so if you like C O W A R D S you’ve got lots to catch up on.

Check out Cameron Evesque Davis’s work here!

7. JSS – Order of the Wolf

While I’m sure I’ve run into these before, I don’t have any memory of them; this track is from a split album between two bands! Rather than a compilation of several bands or a guest feature, there’s three tracks from each, evenly split down the middle — the first three are songs by Wolven Daughter, while the second three are Order of the Wolf. While I like the work of both, my favourite is the very last track, which is an Order of the Wolf song; I like deeply immersive songs with a lot of layers, and the rhythm of this one really sucks me in. It’s also got really impressive guitar and vocal work, where black metal often falls short on one or the other.

Once again, though, I’m begging metal bands to PROVIDE THEIR LYRICS. I’m happy to see that these folks are a queer antifascist black metal band, which spares me some of the usual headache when dealing with black metal, but it would still be really nice to know what you’re singing about. You put a lot of work into those lyrics. Let me see em!!!!

You can listen to JSS by Order of the Wolf — and check out Wolven Daughter’s work as well — over here!

8. Remember Us To Death – Transgressive

An amazing, heartbreaking thrash-metal dirge of a song. ‘Remember Us To Death’ is dedicated to Channell Perez Ortiz, Ashia Davis, Banko Brown, Ashley Burton, Tasiyah Woodland, Eden Knight and Brianna Ghey – only a handful of the losses our queer community has suffered in the last few years, but ones where most of us will recognize at least one name. This is, first of all, a beautiful tribute — fantastic lyrics, and a dirge in content but not in form, with driving guitars and growled/screamed lyrics more befitting queer wrath than anything else.

Secondly, it’s also a fucking amazing thrash song. Clocking in at almost nine minutes, one almost expects it to drag on, but despite the intensity starting at moment one and never really letting up, it still has the ebb and flow to keep you listening and paying attention all the way through. Some of that is because of the interplay of vocals between Beef (Bethany Pitts) and guest vocalist Lux Edwards — some of it is just the phenomenal instrumentation. Either way, don’t miss out on this one. You’ll regret it.

Check out Remember Us To Death by Transgressive here!

9. Megaloner – Circuit des Yeux

….God, these vocals. The percussion. The VIIIIIBES. This is like Depeche Mode and Bjork for the 21st century (yes, I know Bjork’s still around, no disrespect to the mother herself intended). Or the 22nd century, honestly, because the futuristic feeling of this is wild.

Circuit Des Yeux is an Indiana-based singer-songwriter who’s been active since 2007 in experimental music scenes, and has a 4-octave singing range — so every note you hear on this track is her. (Holy shit. Jealous.)

Check out ‘Megaloner’ by Circuit des Yeux here!

10. Bloodspiller – Apathy

True story: when I first checked this song out, about three days after it had released, it had about 300-500 views. At the time of me writing this column, it has 57k. Don’t you love a good success story? (And only some of it can be attributed to that adorable murderkitty OC. Look at them!)

This is an experimental-electro/trance track, so it’s a little more laid back than the other stuff on here (in fact, it’s closest in tone to Lena Raine’s work but if Children of the Earth got into the ketamine) but it’s definitely got that good thuddy to it if you like your music to have some knives in it. (I’m totally a professional expert music understander, guys. Why else would you come to the deaf guy for your recs?) It’s also apparently inspired by a musician called Femtanyl who — aside from having a fucking kickass name, what the shit — is new to me! So not only did I get a new song, I have a new artist to check out as well as Apathy!

Check out Bloodspiller by Apathy here!

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Additionally — most, if not all the artists I’ve posted about this time around are queer and/or trans. There’s a reason I post Bandcamps when I can, and that’s so that you, my readers, can do your part to support vulnerable queer lives. Listening to a song on Spotify is something, but it’s fractions of a cent. Buying a track on Bandcamp, though, or even a whole album, costs less than a coffee — and it not only helps put money in a starving artist’s pocket, but it shows them, it shows us, that you’re out there. And then it’s yours to listen to, forever! Think about it. Taylor Swift will never know that you bought her music — but indie artists will, and do, and it means the world.
GENREFVCKERY: January 2025 Round-Up

March 18th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Genrefvckery monthly roundup, which definitely happens once a month and which I am absolutely not lying about. (I’m trying to get better about that.)

This month, I’m making a concerted effort to pull more from Bandcamp; I’m a little overly reliant on the Spotify Release Radar function, especially since I’ve trained it so well, but I want to give a wider range of artists their due.
1. Clones – x2001x (Sera Louise)
Será Louise is a multi-instrumentalist musician from Portland, Oregon — and a multi-genre artist as well, with several different projects all on one Bandcamp page! (And they’re all amazing.) This particular project of hers, x2001x, is dedicated to experimental harsh noise/lo-fi work, and this album is a particularly fascinating, dissonant collection. Aptly enough, it’s only called Music, and each track slides smoothly into the next, recorded with “a variety of methods”. (Very Lynchian.) My favourite of these is Clones, which feels like the aural equivalent of a good trip that is slowly, inexorably, going bad on you (and there’s nothing you can do about it). Little glitches in the Matrix, faces that aren’t where they’re supposed to be…

Check out the album on Bandcamp here!

2. Stained Glass – Harsh Symmetry

I am a dedicated fan of 80s New Wave, including everything from Tears for Fears to Echo and the Bunnymen, so finding a modern artist bringing that classic post-punk sound to the 2020s has me ecstatic. Not only does Harsh Symmetry have the voice, he’s got the synth sound, which is incredibly hard to duplicate (the more modern synths became, the less they achieved a very specific jangly tone which you hear in 70s and 80s music. It’s why the originals are so expensive!). Stained Glass in particular feels straight out of the Batcave in a way modern goth/punk music so rarely achieves, or even aspires to.

Check out Harsh Symmetry on Bandcamp here!

3. Flood II – Motherhood

This track opens up a bizarre concept album from New Brunswick art-rock band Motherhood, described as narrating the “sudden abduction of an unsuspecting pedestrian by a dark, expanding Cloud”. Bowie and Syd Barrett would be proud. High concept aside, though, this track is filled with driving guitars, thudding percussion, and a bright, distorted sound that stands in sharp contrast with the lyrics about witnessing a suicide and the initial abduction by the Cloud. It’s an excellent opening track and stands well on its own, too; a balance not all concept album overtures strike.

Check out Motherhood here!

4. Blue – Lady and the Clowns

I first ran across Lady and the Clowns a few months ago, through their incredible cover of Madonna’s Hung Up. I’m thrilled to say that their original work is just as good, if not better for being free of Madonna’s songwriting. “Blue” in particular is a rock ballad in fine form that showcases Sara Bassetti’s soaring vocals beautifully, and the distinctive chorus has been stuck in my head for days already.

As for Lady and the Clowns themselves, they’re an Italian trio with an inflatable banana mascot, comprised of Bassetti, Marina Aristotile on bass and backing vocals, and Fabrizio Orlando on drums. Mar Viola is their second full-length release and their first unaffiliated with a game — and it’s a hell of an album. “Blue” is an amazing track, but the whole album is worth a look, with tracks in both English and Italian.

Unfortunately, the full album isn’t yet on their Bandcamp — but I’ll link it here for the curious.

5. God Save The Queens – Vienna Vienna

There’s been a lot of queer, BIPOC, and working-class resistance anthems coming out — more and more all the time, some more subtle than others. But this is the first one so far that feels so much like it should be a world-changing hit. It’s not just catchy, it demands your attention; it’s performed with a saucy, fuck-you drawl, and the lyrics are both pointed and fucking funny. “Mister Lincoln rocking leather, even he was gay” is where I started cackling out loud, but it’s excellent from line one to the very end. I love every song I put on these lists, but this is one where I’m actively annoyed that it’s not a radio hit. (Which is also me telling you to start blasting it at protests, my friends. Bring your feathers and sequins.)

Listen to “God Save The Queens” on Bandcamp here!

6. Ela Minus – Broken

Ela Minus is a Colombian artist who debuted in 2020 — on this, her second record, she releases music that sounds like taking a synth into a cathedral. “Broken” starts off hesitant, with synth bubbling underneath it, but with every second that passes, the chords resolve a little more, the layers deepen, and the pace picks up after the first minute into an absolute joy of a song. Like I said, it sounds like being in a cathedral somehow. But with synths and pads and a beat — so the best kind of cathedral.

Check out the full album here!

7. TOOTHACHE – Hannah Richardson

A fantastic bubblegrunge song from another artist new to me — it should be noted that this is not the Hannah Richardson from CHERYM, although fans of CHERYM will like this track too! It starts off as fun and decent on the vocals, but it’s in the last third of the song that Richardson’s vocal talent really shines through. I’m also more than a little in love with the lyrics — in essence, “you’re very sweet and kind and nice and it’s not my thing, thank you”.

8. Run Rabbit – ALT BLK ERA

God, I love ALT BLK ERA. Watching Black girls get recognized in the industrial and rock scenes bit by clawed-out bit is wonderful, and these two have been making waves for a few years now. I first encountered ALT BLK ERA through their 2022 single “Off With Their Heads”. While “Run Rabbit” — off their first full-length album Rave Immortal — is a little lighter on the heavy metal screams, it’s still solidly hard rock/industrial, with pounding synths in the background and distortion dancing with smooth vocals. I do miss the harshness of their earlier singles a bit, but it’s all about stylistic range.

Check out Rave Immortal here!

9. The New Alphabet – Delivery

I’ve run into so many punks from Australia while doing this that I’m so curious to go check out their scene — they’ve clearly got an incredible pool of talent, and Delivery is no exception. A five-piece alt-rock/punk band from Melbourne, they came crashing onto the DIY scene back in 2021. Force Majeure is their second full-length LP, and the whole thing is a fantastic piece of work, but “The New Alphabet” is definitely my favourite. It’s hooky and clever, albeit a little musically brighter-toned than my usual punk tastes — but what’s life without variety? I wish they had the lyrics posted because what I can catch is great, but that’s something I want to bug all indie bands about. POST YOUR DAMN LYRICS!

Check out Force Majeure here!

10. Wanna Start A Band? – Sleigh Bells

Sleigh Bells make exactly the kind of unhinged industrial-synth dance music I love to inject directly into my veins. (Between them, ALT BLK ERA and my abiding love for Black Dresses, you’re probably catching a theme.) They’re a lot more well-established than the other bands on here — formed in 2008, they’re coming up on sixteen years in the game, with “Wanna Start A Band?” serving as a likely preview to album number seven. They’ve managed to keep their sound the whole time while still keeping things fresh — there’s a lot of people who wish they could capture Alexis Krauss’s relentless energy — and “Wanna Start A Band?” feels laced with feminine rage if that term hasn’t been hammered into the ground yet. “Go call another witness/It’s personal, not business/Shut up and let me finish” just feels far too pointed to be anything else.

Listen to Sleigh Bells’s latest single here!

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GENREFVCKERY: December Round-Up

March 7th, 2025
I’m back! I’d say I’m wandering in late with Starbucks, but I’m still boycotting and you should be too. (Try Second Cup, or Happy Goat if you got ’em nearby. Even better, just make your own.)

Two things: One, I’m realizing that the easiest way to do this for me is accepting that these take two weeks to a month to fairly curate. (And that way stuff that’s released late in the month gets fair play.) This time around I also got the flu twice in a fairly short span of time, so it took extra long.

Two… Hell’s bells December was BIG for music. Which seems counter-intuitive! You’d think it would be quiet! But no, part of why this is late is because whittling this list down was hard.
1. House of the Rising Sun – Rhiannon Paige
I love a good cover – but I already have a favourite version of House of the Rising Sun (Oceans of Slumber) so when this came up, I was a bit hesitant. But Rhiannon Paige has a hell of a voice — and I give kudos to ANYBODY who doesn’t change pronouns. There are actually two different versions of House of the Rising Sun, both about as old as each other, from a male and female perspective; so I respect the decision all the more. (It’s probably just that she’s explicitly covering the Animals version, but still.) It takes a powerful voice to pull off this kind of intensity, and Paige has the pipes and the heart for it. It won’t replace Oceans of Slumber for me but it’s damn close.

That’s all already given me respect for Paige. Finding out that she’s got this kind of voice after a childhood with 70% hearing loss? DAMN. (I’m deaf myself and face plenty of hurdles as a music lover.)

2. Disaster(er) Party – Bad Mary

And now for something completely different! Last roundup I had a couple riot-grrl pop-punkers. This group is ska-punk. Disaster(er) Party sounds like if Green Day had recorded Nimrod in 1979 and it’s amazing. Loud, cheerful, crunchy and with slightly raspy female vocals, this is just fun to listen to.

Even more fun is the band itself. Music history has all sorts of band configurations – real families, fake siblings, whatever the hell Fleetwood Mac was — but this one’s a first. Vocalist Amanda heads up the band, along with…her husband, her dad, and her professor? They’ve been going since 2013, and they make excellent music, so it’s clearly working!

3. Lâu Đài Cát by Thỏ Trauma

I love finding new international music, particularly outside the deeply exploitative industries of K-Pop and J-Pop. So I’m deeply pleased to have stumbled on Thỏ Trauma, a Vietnamese singer, composer and self-described metalhead. Her music isn’t metal exactly, but the influence is audible. And holy SHIT her voice. We often think of a ‘good female voice’ as having sweeping high notes, but Thỏ Trauma has the kind of alto that fills a room and keeps your attention. I’ve only heard a few of her songs so far and I’m already contemplating selling a kidney to hear her life. And this is as someone who doesn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese!

It is a tragedy, then, that her Western crossover status isn’t strong enough yet to find translations for any of these lyrics. I managed to translate a couple of the first lines through finding a transcription, enough to know that this is a love song, but beyond that I’m reliant only on the melody and the emotions in her voice. That’s enough for me to happily have this on repeat, though, and I raise a glass to Thỏ Trauma’s continued success.

4. Pink Poison – I Don’t Wear Pink

Pink Poison is the first single from I Don’t Wear Pink, an all-girl rock band from Mexico City formed in January 2023, singing in both English and Spanish. This is a fun mid-tempo pop-punk number, and between these folks and some of the new bands from the prior list (The Hex in particular) I have this urge to host a Lilith Fair for the new century. (If Coachella wasn’t run by fucking cowards–)

This is a really good first single, too. As far as I can tell — since I tragically don’t speak Spanish — these girls are completely independent, and I congratulate any band taking a shot at that in the hostile anti-art world of the 2020s but particularly when they’re doing it well. There’s room to experiment for following singles, so I’m curious to see what they do next — but the talent and the charisma is absolutely there.

5. Bekhauf (ft. Babymetal) – Bloodywood

Time for one of my patented genre whiplashes! ‘Bekhauf’ is a collaboration between two absolutely off-the-wall bands — Bloodywood, an Indian band that fuses Indian folk instruments, rap and nu-metal growling, and driving guitars, and Babymetal — the one and only kawaii-metal band. (There might be others now, but they’re always going to be the original.)

This is kryptonite to me on several levels. One, the song’s just fun as hell to listen to. Fantastic for writing fight scenes. Two, it is infuriatingly hard to get into non-Western music, particularly metal, if you’re not fluent in about 20 other languages, and even harder for non-Western bands to make much headway. It’s gotten easier (SO MUCH) with the rise of online distribution, but I still cheer every time there’s another breakthrough, and one that lasts. (I’m still so deeply pleased that The HU are still around and still popular in the West after Yuve Yuve Yu went viral.) And three… I’m a basic bitch. I love a collab. I love me some beauty and the beast vocals. I love the multilingual chaos happening here, I just love everything about it. Hindi, Japanese and English lyrics all at once (and, fun note, I mistakenly grabbed one of the Hindi/Japanese verses to try translate it and Google Translate thought it was Nepali. So that was interesting!).

And, oh, by the way: the music video looks like this. It’s by Goppo Animation – an Indian animation studio that’s been making waves, and no wonder. Look at that. LOOK at it. Gorgeous.

6. Every You Every Me – Megan McDuffee

I usually try not to have more than one cover per list, but this is a song I don’t think I’ve ever heard covered before; the original is by the band Placebo, and this is a stunning version that keeps the grunginess of the original while adding synthwave elements — and of course a completely different type of vocals. This is my first introduction to Megan McDuffee and I’m very curious to dive more into her work — she’s apparently primarily a composer which means that the arrangement of this is likely all her work. Fantastic.

7. La imitacion es inutil – Mica Hourbeigt, Jazzie Lock

I’ve been ending up with a lot of Spanish-English bilingual music on my radar! Hardly surprising given the amount of Spanish speaking folks in the world. This particular track by Mica Hourbeigt – an Argentinian composer and producer — is a jazzy, alt-hard-rock number featuring Brooklyn-based Jazzie Lock. The descending fill at the beginning in particular is really distinctive, and it’s nice to hear a song I’d recognize a mile away.

8. Time – To Die In Beauty

A German electronic duo founded in 2021, To Die In Beauty have a distinct gothic/darkwave bent, and this song feels like something from a cybergoth future. Maybe more relaxed than a lot of the standard takes on the idea, but that’s part of what I like it. I’m not sure if it’s a deliberate reference to the Pink Floyd song, but honestly, when it comes to The Dark Side Of The Moon, if you think it’s a reference, it probably is.

What surprises me is that these folks only have 230 monthly listeners on Spotify — but I’m trying to move away from Spotify away, so I’m happy to report that they have their own website! Not just for promo, either; you can buy their tracks directly from them.

9. Self-Explained (ROC) – LoveX, JeeRAWRXD

An electro/hyperpop collab between a self-described Swedish femboy (LoveX) and an “aurizztic femcel bitch” (JeeRAWRXD), this song feels like an artifact from another time. Not in a bad way; it gives me flashbacks to high school, but in a cathartic kind of way. It’s a blend of hyperpop and scene on a base of purely 2020s-era instrumentation, and good god it gets stuck in my head. It’s the perfect length, too — short, but if it was any longer I think it would overstay its welcome between the layers of distortion and deliberately-fuzzy vocals. As it is, though, it’s perfect – catchy, edgy, and somehow just sincere enough.

10. 5150 – Mommy Mommy

This song is hard-hitting for me personally — on top of just genuinely being really good. It’s similar to Self-Explained in the mix of Y2K throwback aesthetics and modern sound, but in this case, it’s a blend of 2000s indie-rock with the wild distortion of queercore and industrial. 5150 is a reference to California’s law permitting an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold, and the song starts off slow and mournful about “voices telling me I’m better off dead” before the dissonance clatters in like an uninvited guest. It’s some incredible songwriting from a self-described queer band and I’ll definitely be following their work. My one gripe is that I would love to read the lyrics in detail, but I can’t find them anywhere! Post your lyrics, people! Let me love you!

And that’s my December round-up! January and February are on their way — and if you’d like me to give something of yours a listen, hit me up through the contact page.

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GENREFVCKERY: Post Rerun: Five Songs On Spotify You’ve Probably Never Heard

January 3rd, 2025
I’ve been running this blog for a long time now, although not as long as some; still, looking back at 2018 is a weird, weird experience. In the interests of keeping my blog more active than it has been, I’m rerunning some of my old posts — with commentary!

Here is the old post we’re revisiting today: https://elliottdunstan.com/2018/06/08/five-songs-spotify-youve-probably-never-heard/

Setting aside the hipster-Buzzfeed-ness of the name (something I haven’t managed to entirely rid myself of) this is a pretty solid list. I’m actually incredibly pleased to say that Raphael’s career has taken off since, so of all the songs on there, that one is less and less true! It’s also strange to see me talk about songs with very few listeners and realize this was before my obsession with The Smelling Fresh, because I expected them to be on here. But these days, I could make a list like this with a hundred entries and not just five.

…Well, if you’re going to twist my arm…

I won’t do a hundred. But in the spirit of revisiting old themes, here’s five more songs that, statistically speaking, are probably new to you.
1. Coloured Glass – The Breathers
This one makes me sad, honestly; the flip side of any “hidden gem”, especially an old one, is that here’s a musician/band who put something out and didn’t get the attention they deserved. This is a beautiful song with stellar production, a voice that makes me want to close my eyes and slow-dance, and lyrics that just… live in my brain. This type of folk/country is competitive, though, and I just hope these folks know that their music’s reached somebody.

2. Nunca – Polardegos

On the complete other end of the spectrum, you’ve got this fascinating soundscape of a song by Norwegian band Polardegos. They call themselves a ‘samplepunk’ band, which in practice means you’ve got rap sections, soaring choral riffs, shouted sections, and it comes together shockingly well. Their audience is clearly in Norway from their Spotify bio being exclusively in Norwegian, but with a bit of good luck I can see them being very successful. This is also, thankfully, a more recent release; so that luck may still be on its way.

3. Count On You – The Smelling Fresh

I mentioned these boys earlier, but I never miss a chance to bring them up. (Seriously, every chance I get I’ll plug them.) The Smelling Fresh are two college friends – Brian Yates and James Matthews – who made an album while in university, and several years later, prompted by a message from someone who’d stumbled on their music, got back in touch and started making music again. They’re phenomenally talented, and another case where I am Personally Offended by them not being the next massive hit yet.

Below is one of their best songs, but their entire body of work is just fun to listen to — although I will always have a special place in my heart for ‘Touch the Ceiling’.

4. God In A Can (Surf Song) – Yorn’s Apostles

I love whatever the fuck this is. Psychedelic trip-hop surf rock grunge instrumental…. something. I couldn’t tell you a thing about the band except that they’re from California (of course they are) and that they have a Bandcamp over here! Consider supporting them directly if you got a buck or two extra! I always have a particular soft spot for guitar lines that feel completely immersive — if it’s too clean, it bores me.

5. Tall Trees, Long Shadows – Ian Campbell

This one’s an odd one. There’s every possibility, if you’re in folk music circles, that you’ve heard (at least one of) the original songs in this medley; Tall Trees Long Shadows and Janet Munson’s. They’re not as popular as some, but they still get some traffic. But if you’re not in those circles, they’re probably new to you. Outside of Celtic circles, most people know Tell Me Ma and the odd Lindsey Stirling song; that’s about it.

As far as this specific remix goes, Spotify claims a couple hundred listeners. In the real world, it’s hard to say, because this was one of those CDs that was sold on gift racks as “ambient music”. (Every date I find for it claims 2013, by the way, but that is an outright lie. It’s 2008 or earlier, because I was listening to this all through high school.) This entire album is what got me into the world of Celtic electronica… which is, tragically, not that big a world. Lindsey Stirling, the Sidh, the Peatbog Faeries and Taylor Davis make up the bulk of it, honestly.

Still, this is probably new to you… and if it isn’t, there’s every chance I’ve just unlocked a core memory.

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