Genre: Rock
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Soot Sprite – Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon
Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon is an essential album: a fierce protest record that calls for empathy and unity as tools of rebellion.
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Farmer’s Wife — Faint Illusions
Farmer’s Wife’s Faint Illusions is five twisted lullabies – gothic, grotesque, and grimly hypnotic. Classic grunge with sickly sweet lyrics worthy of Angela Carter.
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Lonnie Gunn
Grungy and fierce, Lonnie Gunn’s recent singles sound like an unhinged Live Through This-era Courtney Love.
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True Names: A Benefit for Trans Youth
True Names feels like a sampler from Matador Records in 1998. It’s a killer indie music mixtape with proceeds going to support Trans Youth.
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PANIK FLOWER — rearview EP
PANIK FLOWER’s rearview EP blends dreamy shoegaze with raw emotion, balancing ethereal beauty and punky angularity in six haunting tracks.
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Kaput — I
KAPUT’s debut LP I is the perfect soundtrack for a slick dystopian nightmare. Their jagged no-wave sound is matched by searing social critique.
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houseguest — cry about it / divine creation
Houseguest’s cry about it EP and new single “divine creation” are poetic and affirming anthems of love and grief from the all-trans indie-rock band.
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William Carlos Whitten & Diana Crash — Telepaths
Telepaths is gritty, unhinged, literary, chaotic rock and roll. If Lou Reed, William S. Burroughs and Kim Gordon somehow formed a band in 2025, this might be the result.
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Ribbon Skirt – Bite Down
Ribbon Skirt’s debut Bite Down is an easy frontrunner for best of 2025. Tashiina Buswa’s razor-sharp rage makes this a grungy post-punk essential.
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Cousines like Shit — Permanent Earthquake
On Permanent Earthquake, Vienna’s Cousines Like Shit mix absurd indie pop with anti-capitalist zingers. It’s danceable and fun with a ton of memorable one-liners.