August 2015 music update.

These playlists are getting longer, but there’s just more good music out there – I even cut a few tracks because I can keep raising the bar with so much great independent music coming out. This month’s playlist has a bunch of familiar artists, but also has more pop or at least non-alternative songs than any list I’ve crafted so far. We’re also headed into a two-month span with a ton of promising albums coming out, many of which are foreshadowed here.

Deerhunter – Snakeskin. Deerhunter have been around for over a decade, and while their sound is really all over the map, I haven’t heard anything from them as cohesive or melodic as “Snakeskin,” the tumbling, funk-soaked lead single from Fading Frontier, due out in October.

Superhumanoids – Norwegian Black Metal. The second track from their sophomore album, Do You Feel OK?, due out September 11th, is just as promising as the first single “Anxious in Venice” was. I first heard the trio’s music last year via their fantastic two-sided single “Come Say Hello”/”Hey Big Bang” last year, with Sarah Chernoff’s vocals a real standout in a field of dream-pop and other indie artists who stick a female singer out front without regard to her range or depth.

CHVRCHES – Never Ending Circles. Another stellar single from their sophomore album, Every Open Eye, due out September 25th.

Pure Bathing Culture – Pray For Rain. The lead single from this Portland, Oregon, indie-pop duo is their best song yet, more modern than the ’70s vibe that permeated their debut album.

Beirut – Gibraltar. Zach Condon’s fourth album as Beirut, No No No, is due out September 11th; there’s a delightful weirdness about this song, which starts out like LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean” before the piano (real) and handclaps (maybe real) come in.

The Colourist – When I’m Away. I loved the Colourist’s first single, 2013’s “Little Games,” but the rest of their debut album (released the following year) fell short of that song’s strong central hook and shifting sounds and tempos. This title track from their latest EP follows a similar formula, slightly less catchy but with a more upbeat tempo throughout.

Civil Twilight – Holy Dove. This South African quartet just put out their first album in three years, since their second album brought the minor hit “Fire Escape” to alternative radio here. “Holy Dove” isn’t quite as intense, exchanging that for a more mid-American shuffle backing up the vocal hook in the chorus.

BØRNS – The Emotion. Garrett Borns’ first full-length album, Dopamine, is due out in October, featuring a couple of the tracks from his previous EP release, but “The Emotion” is his best song to date, a shimmering, hazy song where Borns gets all the feels into his high-register vocals.

Cœur De Pirate – Carry On. Roses, the third album from Quebecois pop singer Béatrice Martin, features her first original compositions in English, although most of the album is in French like her previous work.

Allison Weiss – Golden Coast. Apparently Weiss is a big deal in indie circles, funding her first album in 2009 with a hugely successful Kickstarter (and you thought Kickstarter was just for boardgames) before that was a thing. Weiss’s indie aesthetic doesn’t really stretch to her music, as “Golden Coast” is a pop song like you’d expect to hear on a top 40 station … it’s just better than most other songs of its type, lighter on production and heavier on songcraft.

Low – Lies. I remember Low from the mid-1990s, when I kind of dismissed them as too slow and dull for my then grunge-influenced tastes, and hadn’t realized they were still around until I came across this lead single from their upcoming album, Ones and Sixes, their eleventh to date, also due out September 11th. “Lies” is slow and mournful, just like most of Low’s music; I’ve probably aged into them more than they’ve changed their sound in any way.

Neon Indian – Slumlord. The second single from Alan Palomo’s upcoming album VEGA INTL. Night School, due October 16th, is unapologetic in its devotion to early 1980s New Wave, probably to its detriment when compared to the more progressive lead single “Annie,” even though the lyrics here are quite a bit darker.

Small Black – No One Wants It to Happen to You. It’s synthpop meets shoegaze – I think Carles would call it “chillwave,” although SB themselves apparently disdain the label – with a dissonant, wailing guitar solo that elevates this song from the background to the fore.

Josh Ritter – Getting Ready to Get Down. It’s catchy, but it also makes me laugh, right down to the line “Jesus hates your high school dances;” Ritter seems to be satirizing America’s leading family of degenerates, the Duggars, in a track about a teenaged girl escaping the moral and sexual repression of her evangelical family and judgmental neighbors.

Little May – Seven Hours. The Sydney trio’s first full-length album, For the Company, is due out October 9th, featuring sweet harmonies and more acoustic-to-electric rhythm guitar lines, music rooted in folk but borrowing more from dream-pop for their melodic inspiration.

Lou Barlow – Wave. Founding member of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, and Folk Implosion, Barlow will release his first solo album in six years on Friday, with this track starring him on vocals and ukulele, giving the song an unmistakable beach-music feel. I do wish it didn’t sound like it was recorded in a closet, though.

Passport to Stockholm – All at Once. This young British quartet includes a cellist among its members, and that’s the distinguishing characteristic of their soaring folk-rock sound, reminiscent of Birds of Tokyo and, yes, the earlier work of Mumford & Sons.

Boy & Bear – Walk the Wire. More great independent music from Australia – I’m starting to think every adult on that continent is a member of at least one indie band.

Mutemath – Monument. I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of Mute Math or this particular song – it’s fine, if unremarkable – but I know from past conversations many of you like the band. I’ve found their lyrics to be very disappointing; if you’re going with a name that includes “math” there’s a higher standard in my book.

Palma Violets – Danger in the Club. The title track from this British trio’s latest album sounds like a big drinking song – and like it was actually recorded in the pub where everyone was getting hammered.

Radkey – Evil Doer. I had higher hopes for this punk-pop trio’s debut album Dark Black Makeup, but it’s very safe and overproduced, emphasizing the pop over the punk. I know that not every African-American punk band can be Bad Brains, but these kids had some of that looser, angrier feel in their earlier releases.

Wavves – Heavy Metal Detox. Their fifth album, V, comes out October 2nd, and this third single from the album (not to be confused with their collaborative album with Cloud Nothings from July) is its most promising yet, hook-filled but uncompromising, probably the closest thing to a post-Nirvana act going today.

The Dead Weather – I Feel Love (Every Million Miles). This supergroup, with Jack White its best-known member, will put out its third album, Dodge and Burn, on September 25th; it includes two tracks released as singles in 2014, as well as this rocker, with White doing Jack White things on the guitar, which is what Jack White should probably spend most of his time doing.

SEXWITCH – Helelyos. SEXWITCH is Natasha Khan, a.k.a. Bat for Lashes, along with the English rock band Toy and producer Dan Carey. They’ve recorded covers of a half-dozen psychedelic tracks from around the world, including this Iranian track about “my dark girls” that takes on quite a different meaning when Khan sings it.

Deaf Wish – Sex Witch. This Aussie post-punk act’s half-hour debut album Pain is decidedly anti-commercial, almost grating, until the sudden arrival of this seventh track, a slower song that marries the anti-tonal vocal style of Kim Gordon with the dissonant math-rock of Polvo.

Battles – The Yabba. Is there a better experimental rock act going right now than Battles? I’d have it down to them and These New Puritans, as both acts produce intelligent, unpredictable, technically proficient music that manages to veer over the line into accessibility too.

Ghost B.C. – From The Pinnacle To The Pit. This bizarre Norwegian black metal act (it all ties together on my playlists) is almost shameless in its borrowing of sounds from British Heavy Metal to late-80s thrash to the Crystal Method-inspired guitar line that opens this track, the second from their most recent album, Meliora. Ghost’s members all appear under pseudonyms, and they maintain a facetious Satanic theme in their lyrics and appearance, something that only detracts from the fact that they’re producing some of the most compelling metal in the market today – it’s heavy yet melodic, eschewing death growls and blast beats but retaining the musical sensibilities of the Gothenburg style or even Finnish acts like Children of Bodom. I think the
Pitchfork review of Melioradoes a great job of summing up the album’s strengths and limitations. These guys are going to have to grow up at some point if they want to have any legacy beyond modest record sales, instead of running over the same old ground of tired black-metal tropes and Halloween costumes.