Take five punk rockers from bands like The Humpers, The Lovesores, The Suicide Notes, The Epoxies, 8-Foot Tender that reach from Long Beach, California to Portland, Oregon, have them bounce some ideas back and forth to shake off restlessness, and you end up with a new band, Guerrilla Teens and a new EP, Sympathy for the Decibel (which might be the best-named record of 2026).
“We were born in a car crash,” proclaims Scott “Deluxe” Drake as the title track opens the EP with rip-roaring energy. “Ghost of New Orleans” blends surf rock (check out those drums from “Teenage” Tim Connolly) with punk satire.
“Gravedigger” has fun with the band’s love of horror movies, so get it on your Halloween playlist before the season’s over. Anna “Bananas” Andersen‘s bass groove on it is as solid as tombstone. “Spider Bouquet” is another great addition to your spooky sounds of the season. The EP ends with the growling, grungy, ghastly “You’re Looking Good” and “Deaf” Jeff Fieldhouse and Saul “Teen” Koll tearing up their guitars to go out with a bang.
Grab onto this EP and hold on. It’s a fun, wild ride.
Safe as Milkby Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band is one of those albums that tore up San Francisco in the late 1960s but was barely heard anywhere else until the one and only John Peel found it and blasted it to fame on British airwaves. It’s become regarded as a landmark psychedelic record and one that many music critics and bloggers suggest you hear at least once (before you blindly wander into Trout Mask Replica).
Starting with “Sure ‘Nuff ‘n Yes I Do,” the band riffs on the classic “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” blues classic with the Captain (Don Van Vliet) giving us slightly raspy vocals perfect for the genre. You can probably guess the inspiration behind “Zig Zag Wanderer.” Ry Cooder‘s psych-rock guitar riffs are great, and Jerry Handley‘s bass is almost as thick as molasses. “Call on Me” shows how Beefheart and The Magic Band could easily shift back and forth from grungy blues to psych-out love songs (“If you need free love, call on me, ’cause I’m gonna call on you.”).
“Dropout Boogie” is wild, wooly, and weird…which is everything you want in a Captain Beefheart song. Van Vliet shows that he can, you know, actually sing on the classic ballad “I’m Glad.”
“Electricity” is the center of the album, and it’s a freak-out complete with Theremin by Samuel Hoffman that pushes your brain to the melting point. “Yellow Brick Road” is a psych-folk song on its surface but has some surprising heft to hit. “Abba Zaba” was the original title of Safe as Milk and is the name of Van Vliet’s favorite candy bar. Cooder’s guitar and bass work on it is top-notch, as is Van Vliet’s harmonica riffs on “Plastic Factory,” which is a solid, gritty blues rocker you’ll instantly love.
“Where There’s Woman” is a short blues track about the troubles of love, and then their solid cover of Robert Pete Williams‘ “Grown So Ugly” hits like a shot of bourbon. The album ends with the warped, incense smoked-filled “Autumn’s Child.” It’s like a psych-rock / sci-fi theme sung by someone who trained under Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
It’s a classic record that inspired more people than you realize. You can put it up there with anything from the late 1960s and it still holds up.
The press release I got for Wine Lips‘ sharp, shredding, and (at times) silly new album, TV Dinner, described it as “what it feels like to exist in 2026.” That’s accurate.
Opener “Cut It” cuts loose with bonkers drumming, roaring guitars, and Cameron Hilborn‘s lyrics about how hard it is to kick anythng nowadays from drugs to doomscrolling. “Projector” has drummer AuroraEvans punching back at people trying to use her as a “verbal punching bag.” “Trip to the Doctor” slaps hard with wicked guitars at people obsessed with holistic practices, physical health, and feeling they know more than people who’ve graduated medical school. The second half shredding in it is stunning.
I have a feeling that “Maybe You Can Give It a Shot” is not so much a “You can do it!” song as it is a “I really don’t care. You can do it.” song. It rocks either way. “Head on Backwards” is full of jagged riffs and Hives-like grooves. “Leech” goes after those who suck the life out of you one way or the other, and the guitar solo on it is like an adrenaline shot into your aorta.
I’m fairly certain “Giant Man Baby” is about a guy who wants to annex Canada (Wine Lips’ home country). “Thirst Trap” is about getting trapped by algorithms (“The nation’s going down because everybody’s brainwashed.”) and ending up down rabbit holes that have kept you from getting crap done all day. “Semi-Detached Furnished Home” fuels everyone’s rage on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border about the cost of every damn thing under the sun: Rent, groceries, gas, all of it. The only thing worth the cost is the price of TV Dinner.
Wine Lips get introspective on “If You Don’t Know” as they confront aging (“Been a long, long time since sixteen.”) and feeling like the world is racing away from you. It’s like a Kaiser Chiefs song if they cranked the fuzz and snarled a bit more. “My brain is melting!” yells Evans on “Fried V,” and you’ll feel the same when you hear it.
“Strip Club DJ” is a fun poke at people who think they’re living the high-life while they’re really just posers. The album ends with “Static on the Radio,” which almost becomes a Wall of Voodoo track if Billy Gibbons played guitar for them.
TV Dinner is everything you need: Tasty, hot, and loaded with weird stuff you can’t always identify. Gulp it down.
Toronto punk quartet Bad Waitress return August 31 with “Lovin’ Kind,” the first advance single from their new album In The Hollow, arriving October 30 via Stomp Records. Landing alongside a new video and the launch of digital and physical pre-orders, the single is the first taste of the band’s first full-length in five years: a self-produced record that takes their already volatile punk somewhere darker, stranger and more inward. Bad Waitress have always sounded a little dangerous around the edges. There’s L7 and Babes In Toyland in the abrasion, the nervous art-punk electricity of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and some of the heavier post-punk pull of METZ and Fugazi, but the collision has always belonged to them. Kali-Ann Butala, Katelyn Molgard, Moon and Nicole Cain make punk that can feel playful one second and vaguely threatening the next, guitars scraping against a punishing rhythm section while Butala moves between melody, sneer and something closer to a warning.
That tension was forged in Toronto’s punk underground, where Bad Waitress built their reputation in sweaty rooms with very little distance between band and audience. Since emerging with 2018’s Party Bangers: Volume 1 and pushing into heavier territory on 2021’s No Taste, they’ve carried that energy well beyond the city, sharing stages with Fucked Up, L7, Rise Against, Wolf Parade and The Bronx. Along the way, their jagged take on punk has earned comparisons to The Stooges, Fugazi and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with New Noise Magazine calling it an “all-out punk assault” and Exclaim! describing their evolution as “a new type of rage.”
“Lovin’ Kind” picks up that volatility without simply retracing it. Recorded with engineer Josh Korody at Wychwood Sound in Toronto and produced by Bad Waitress themselves, the song takes a love-song premise and immediately makes it suspicious. “Tell you I love you / Then destroy you,” Butala sings, as attraction starts tangling with resentment, vulnerability and the instinct to push someone away. By the time the chorus lands on “I’m not the lovin’ kind,” it sounds less like a confession than fair warning. The song keeps doubling back on itself. Come closer. Don’t get too close. Tear me up. Take everything. There’s something funny about the extremity of it, but something uncomfortable underneath too. “Lovin’ Kind” never really settles whether this is romance, self-sabotage or two people knowingly walking into the same terrible idea. Bad Waitress seem perfectly happy leaving it unresolved.
That unease makes “Lovin’ Kind” a fitting entrance to In The Hollow. The album grew out of the collective and personal isolation the band experienced over the past several years, with its members revisiting old memories and relationships from the uncomfortable vantage point of having changed themselves. Some of its imagery reaches much farther from Toronto, drawing on the Northwest Territories and Pacific Northwest, places members of the band grew up, where dark forests, vast wilderness and a sense of mysticism became a way of reflecting the isolation and uncertainty running through the songs. It gives In The Hollow a wider landscape, but the record’s concerns remain deeply personal. Across the album, Bad Waitress grapple with changing relationships, identity, sexuality and the strange experience of encountering earlier versions of yourself from a distance. Rather than treating transformation as some clean break with the past, the songs sit inside the messier part: figuring out what still belongs to you, what doesn’t, and what you’re finally ready to leave behind.
For a band whose music has always thrived on confrontation, there’s something fitting about turning some of that fight inward. Bad Waitress haven’t come back after five years sounding cleaner, calmer or particularly interested in resolution. They’ve simply found new places to put the unease. “Lovin’ Kind” is the first taste: a love song with its guard up, its teeth showing, and one hand already reaching for the door.
Keep your mind open.
[I’ll consider you among the lovin’ kind if you subscribe.]
Continuing their post-hiatus hot streak, The Deathray Davies are back with “Red Lights,” the first advance single from their forthcoming album LAMPSHADE EARTHQUAKE MICROPHONE, a spellbinding set of pocket symphonies that cull inspiration from vintage garage rock and psychedelic pop nuggets while employing heady musique concrète embellishments and ornate studio wizardry.
2021’s Time Well Wasted ushered in the band’s return following a 15-year hiatus, but this outing reaches back even further for source material; the bones of the record stem from a shelved recording project started in 2006. These excavated sessions were reworked and polished by The Davies, carving out the 13 paisley punk epics that make up the tracklist.
With dexterous songwriting, lush instrumental textures, and guest contributions from some Elephant 6 heavyweights, the resulting record is essential listening for the discerning indie rock and roll listener. It arrives via Having Fun / We Are Busy Bodies on November 6, 2026.LAMPSHADE EARTHQUAKE MICROPHONE was completed at sessions in multiple studios – DRM and Valve in Dallas, Echo Lab in Denton, and Dufilho’s home studio Elephant Cloud, where he handled mixing and mastering duties.
The album, for the most part, is performed by Dufilho on guitar/keys and Garner on bass, with the duo trading off on drums and singing in tandem throughout. Live band members Rich Martin, Nick Earl, Andy Lester, and Mike Middleton round out the proceedings, along with collaborators from the initial 2006 sessions – Dufilho’s Apples in Stereo bandmates all contribute vocals, as does the late Olivia Tremor Control co-founder Bill Doss, who also recorded the group of Athens, GA horn players audible on tracks like first single “Red Lights.” Apples leader Robert Schenider lent a hand in taming the recordings, spending about a week with Dufilho sifting through sessions and making sense of the two-decade old ideas. While one could be tempted to call the album a return to form, it’s more accurately a continuation. The record bears more than a passing resemblance to the Davies’ old material, but every corner is brightened by fresh inspiration; it’s a study in leaving no stone unturned.
Composed of Irish duo DJs Ian Ball and David “Not the Talking Heads guy” Byrne, The Dirtbirdz are launching the WYTE LBL label with their powerful Warcrimes EP.
Starting with the bumping, thumping, and slightly terrifying “Death March,” the duo mix one of Rudyard Kipling‘s most famous poems (“Boots”) with swirling synths and thudding bass and drums to excellent effect. “Air Raid” uses synths to mimic sirens. “Surgical Strike” has a relentless beat that feels like it’s broken up now and then with synth pulses, but it really isn’t.
The drums of “Extraction” are pure jungle beats with sizzling hi-hat and slick vocal sounds added in for good measure. The EP ends with the peppy, hypnotic “Retrograde” to keep you dancing until the sudden fade out that’s like the sun coming up over the horizon as you wrap up the rooftop party.
Deux Visages share another vulnerable and crushing dreampop single “Pixelate” alongside its video today. The track “highlights the changes in people you’ve known for a long time and disappointment within them. The name is a nod to the lyrical theme of the person being a vague image of who you once knew,” reveals vocalist Daphney Hanono.
Deux Visages’ is Daphney Hanono, guitarist Jack Chiu and bassist Tony Jouvin – their emergence has been a whirlwind. Founded over a thread of DMs in high school, they quickly signed to Atlantic Records once word of their rampant and immersive live shows hit. Fast-forward >> a series of breakthrough singles, an EP, support tours with Mannequin P*ssy, julie and Wunderhorse, plus an uproot from Miami to Philadelphia >> the three have now perfected their chemistry and eclectic, earnest dream-pop rock that is singularly Deux Visages.
“Pixelate” follows acclaimed singles “Always You” and “Automatic” from their debut full-length albumCall It Goodbye which arrives November 6 via Pure Noise Records. It’s Deux Visages’ coming-of-age story – a sophisticated yet visceral examination of the conflict between the past and the future. Each invigorating and powerful track bristles with the tension and emotions that come with youth and new experiences. On Call It Goodbye, the trio look back at what’s been, while also confidently leaving that very past behind.
Deux Visages recorded Call It Goodbye in Miami with longtime friend Arquimides ‘Arkii’ Cala—who also recorded all of the band’s early material including their very first single “Cheetah”. Cala masterfully captures Deux Visages’ dreamy, soaring, feedback-soaked sound. From the album’s leading euphoric single “Always You,” to the immediate track “Behind,” Deux Visages balance vulnerability with explosive guitars and dynamic shifts. The title track closes out the record with a sense of frustration and urgency, confronting the inevitability of time slipping away.
Together, these songs depict the instability, uncertainty, and growing pains of youth while ultimately embracing change. Call It Goodbye is a record about asserting yourself amid uncertainty—and discovering that, with enough determination and self-belief, you can leave the past behind and move confidently toward whatever comes at you next.
Following their recent North American runs with Sweet Pill and The Linda Lindas, Deux Visages are thrilled to announce two record release shows including a special hometown performance on November 6 at Ruba Club, followed by a NYC show at Club 101 the next night. See below for a full list of dates – find more info and tickets here.
Take a jazz guitarist (Diego Barber) and a jazz percussionist (Alejandro Coello) who have had a long interest in electronic music, put them in the guitarist’s home studio, let them go nuts, and you get MAMBEC and their first EP 846 KM2.
The EP is four tracks of cool as ice electro and house music. “MBC 21” calls for us to “dance all night and dance all day.” I mean, what better response in this batshit crazy world right now? The bumping beats and skronky synths sure help. “MBC 24” starts off with hi-hat work so sizzling that it sounds like Coello might be frying eggs on it. Then come the symphonic synths to make the track sound like a mysterious scene in a sci-fi film.
“MBC 25” continues the sci-fi thrills, bumping up the beats per minute in case you need a chase scene, and the use of vocals on it would make Moby envious. Finally, “MBC 26” ends the EP with thumping bass to keep your hips moving while metallic industrial sounds create a weird, funky beat mix to keep your attention.
It’s a solid EP, making you wonder, “Where are MBC 1-20? And 22 and 23?” You’ll want them all.
Dummy—the Los Angeles-based band of Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, Joe Trainor, and Lance Umble—release “N of 1,” the final single/video from their new album, do you love the color of the sky?, out Friday via Polyvinyl. “I liked the idea of taking glacial guitar drones and cutting ‘em up into a new context of the jungle inspired drums,” says Trainor of the new single. “To me, so much of the record is like the remixed versions of pop songs you’ll never hear.”
do you love the color of the sky? is Dummy’s most politically trenchant record, and yet their most inviting. Breakbeats and the captivating voice of keyboardist Emma belie a sleight hand—as the listener becomes enveloped by Dummy’s unshakable grooves, they’ve subconsciously accrued a vision of a new radical politic. Today’s “N of 1,” for example, discusses how we’ve been conditioned into accepting the surveillance state.
Maatman comments, “‘N of 1’ is a plea to both the proprietors and the more complacent subjects of the ever-encroaching surveillance state. Typically our videos aren’t so direct of a visual representation of the meaning of the song, but I had just gotten it into my head that the zooming action on Street View would go perfectly with the meter and energy of the song, and the rest sort of fell into place after that.”
If 2024’s Free Energy (and its subsequent remix album, Bubbelibrium DLC) evoked the spirit of Madchester and the optimism of the rave, then do you love the color of the sky? couches itself in a lyrical skepticism that recalls the best of post-rock and drone—think Seefeel, Windy and Carl, Laika, or Disco Inferno—while playfully adorned in jubilant pop hues of early Björk, The Sundays, and Madonna‘s Ray of Light.
Despite all the allusions to futurism, Dummy are a classic band. Not in the retrofetishist, nostalgia- trapping sense, but in their work ethic and commitment to the music. As Joe recalls of their time since the release of Free Energy, “We toured a lot, around 150 days, and played approximately 113 shows,” with numerous treks around the US and two trips to Europe, “…and on larger stages than ever before,” Alex adds. “Touring has had a huge impact on us and our music.” That is a staggering amount of touring and roadtripping, a feat that can only be achieved if you truly believe in your art and the power of music itself. It stands to reason, then, that their latest release has also completely shucked the idea of being recreated cleanly in the live setting.
“Making music shouldn’t be fun.” It’s a haughty claim, but when Dummy jokingly asserts this, it comes from a sentiment of earnestness and true love for the game. The blood, sweat, and tears of ‘putting in the work’ is what propels do you love the color of the sky? to a triumph—a byproduct of shedding skins through live performance. It’s not a vast departure from their discography, unmistakably them, and yet constitutes a creative leap forward which almost sounds effortless from the group. It’s a treat to witness a band this creatively in-tune with themselves, whose experiments and ideas always hit, who, when they describe a concept, actually stick the landing. Maybe the future of music comes with the type of deep self-actualization Dummy possesses.
Party Dozen edge closer to the release of new album 21 Bum Salute with the release of final single, “Full Powers,” a swaggering, swampy rock track about the intoxicating highs and ugly excesses of power. It starts confident and euphoric before slowly tipping into something wilder and heavier. Kirsty Tickle is given free reign to fully cut loose as the song moves from a swirling and melodic verse towards a pounding ending, the squalls and squeals absolutely joyous in their rebellion. As much as any song on 21 Bum Salute, and titled utterly appropriately, “Full Powers” shows where Party Dozen are at now: unafraid to experiment with traditional pop structures, big production and melody lines that veer perilously close to lyrics, yet not compromising or sacrificing the raw power or wild abandon that has carried them through four increasingly heard albums and around the world.
On the single, Party Dozen shares: “There’s ‘Full Powers’ good and there’s ‘Full Powers’ bad. The good is when you’re personally becoming too powerful, an angel pisses on you, everything is going very well and suddenly you’re gliding down the street like King Swinging Dick.
“The bad is when one side has all the power and more is not enough. Powerlust, greedmongering, gluttonous fiends. This track switches between the two. It has a really strong, confident feel that gets a little uneasy as the track progresses.”
“It’s like we just don’t care anymore,” says Jonathan Boulet. “But in the best way.”
21 Bum Salute is the fifth album from Sydney experimental psych-noise-pop duo Party Dozen. The work of Kirsty Tickle (saxophone, vocals) and Jonathan Boulet (drums, loops, production), 21 Bum Salute finds the critically-acclaimed, semi-improvised duo feeling liberated – from their peers, their worries, and what the hell they’re supposed to sound like now.
“We’re having more fun than we’ve ever had before,” says Tickle. “This album is kind of putting a middle finger up and waving at someone with a smile at the same time. We’re egging you on to have a good time.”
Emerging in 2017 from the warehouses of the Sydney experimental noise-rock scene, Party Dozen arrive at the release of their fifth album, 21 Bum Salute, in peak form. Over the course of four, increasingly perverse albums of psych-tinged rock peppered with pop noise and bursts of doom in equal measure, they’ve transformed from gleeful noise-makers producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville, NSW, to globe-hopping, critically-adored favourites – producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville.
As well astours with Amyl and the Sniffers, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Tropical F*ckstorm, Algiers and more, Party Dozen had Nick Cave appear on 2022 single ‘Macca The Mutt’, collabed with New York rapper billy woods, performed an incendiary live set on KEXP, signed an international deal with Temporary Residence LTD (Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, MONA, BEAK>), and performed at Pitchfork Fest, All Points East, End Of the Road, Sydney Opera House and been nominated for the Australian Music Prize.
Along the way Party Dozen self-released their first two albums, The Living Man (2017) and Pray For Party Dozen (2020), struck a chord internationally with album The Real Work (2022), which sent them on tours of Europe, North America, Japan, China and New Zealand, while fourth LP, Crime in Australia (2024), an ode to Aussie noir that leaned beyond rock into moodier moments, repeated it. And for 21 Bum Salute?
“On this album we’ve got it down to the absolute best part of the idea for you,” says Tickle. “We’ve trimmed the fat.”
Proof is in punky opener ‘Special Unit’, the roaring ‘Toss My Coin’, swaggering ‘Full Powers’ and disgustingly hectic ‘PMFD’ (aka ‘Party Mother Fucken Dozen’). But there’s weird new sounds too. ‘Euro Stomper’ pitches them onto some gurning dancefloor, the blown out skronk of ‘Captain Honk’ squelches like the aux cord is half-out, and the rinky-dink title track throbs on farting guitars and delay-drenched vocals, conjuring some new liminal space for the band. It’s a whacko new universe – if you want in.
“Party Dozen is just what Jono and I want to do,” says Tickle. Or as Boulet says, “We wash our hands of this world.”
Party Dozen recorded, mixed and mastered 21 Bum Salute completely themselves, over a three month span. Inspired by spooky “old recordings” as well as the primal impulses of acts like ESG and Bikini ill, 21 Bum Salute – named after a peculiar, larrikin ritual in Australia’s arid Northern Territory –condenses consecutive years of jam sessions, loops and improvisations into just over half an hour’s worth of fizzing, strutting, striking sonics from the fringes. “We were looking for groove, some new takes, some weird fucking side quests,” says Boulet. “Some of these songs are the weirdest, oddest ditties we’ve ever made. Which I love. There’s doors we unlocked that we didn’t know were available to us.”
It also features more of Tickle’s vocals than ever before. Lead single ‘Mad Rooter’ is a greasy strut with swinging hips; Tickle grunting and hiccupping around sax stabs and reverb-soaked organ. She becomes the “crazy woman yelling” in the collapsing song that is ‘PMFD’, the speedy narrator of ‘Full Powers’, and the ingenue of ‘The Stinking Rose’, that starts sultry over a bluesy sway, before escalating into shrieks and squawking sax blurts.
There are no lyrics in Tickle’s wails on 21 Bum Salute. It’s the act of singing that compels her. “It’s whatever comes out in the moment,” she says. “My rage and anger and toughness and grunting are a reflection of my female experience. I look people in the eye while I’m shouting down the bell of my sax and I’m proud of it.” It also happens to be super fun. “I’ve never had such a good time in the studio,” says Tickle. “This record was the most enjoyable out of any we’ve done.”
“The ideas come when it’s a weird blend of two things that create a perfect balance,” says Boulet of the Party Dozen magic. “Something that sounds fucked up and you can only just hear what’s happening. It’s a real unspoken excitement that happens when we’re both into it. It’s the real reflection of both our creativity.”
“But it’s like, if you want to get on board with us, come,” says Tickle. “We’re having a great time.”
