#underground-pop

#underground-pop

The xx opened with 'Crystalised,' closed with 'Infinity,' and included the first-ever live performance of 'Season's Run' in their setlist.

It's time for 2026 California to wake up to the fact that Sib, Joe Sib, is a contender for the Best of Us Award. It's wildly rare to have an artist like Sib who crosses over from being in the early punk rock scene to co-founding SideOneDummy Records and discovering talent like Flogging Molly.

Gutter Swan's Loryn Barbeau and Steve Egelman will be joined by Elizabeth Hall and Eric Wind for a live performance at The Lost Church.

Knumears is releasing their debut album Directions on April 3, showcasing their unique sound within the Los Angeles screamo scene. The album is available through Run for Cover and Summer Shade.

Tone Freq Studios captures pristine acoustics and emphasizes analog warmth, creating a tactile space that values collective experiences over the convenience of digital recording methods.

A special 50th anniversary Punk Rock history event at The New Farm featuring bands and musicians from the dawn of the punk rock revolution of San Francisco. NO ALTERNATIVE, SLEEPERS AD, SOCIETY DOG plus AVENGERS guitar player GREG INGRAHAM performing with JEAN CAFFEINE, THE DEAD SAILOR GIRLS & INSECT LOUNGE.

Thaiboy Digital's first album in four years showcases a collaboration with the Swedish production collective Swedm, featuring contributions from Varg2™, Eurohead, and Jamesjamesjames.

You could go anywhere in America and argue with some success for the cultural impact wrought by most of the once-subcultural stars of Lizzy Goodman's oral history of New York's post-9/11 rock scene, 'Meet Me In The Bathroom.' Or, for God's sake, Jeff Chang's history of hip-hop, 'Can't Stop Won't Stop.' But to explain this era to someone who hasn't devoted their psyche or youth to 'indie rock,' you'd need to spend a whole dinner, and maybe a few drinks afterwards, justifying why the tentpole events that 'Us v. Them' returns to multiple times in its 300-page run mean anything.

R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.

The category's been going around social media for a bit, but there's even a domain exclusively for Cigarette Mom Rock. There, the meaning of the genre is described as a "feminine counterpart to 'divorced dad rock,'" but is also meant to conjure up images of your own hard-working '90s mom, driving you to baseball practice with the windows down and a cigarette in one hand.

When he's not making proggy folk as a solo artist, Richard Dawson gets his skronk on as part of proggy new-wave art-rock group Hen Ogledd. Despite my attempts to do so in the previous sentence, the band are hard to succinctly describe: they can pivot from warm synthpop to mossy faerie folk to baggy Manchester shuffle beats to dense prog and even flashes of hip hop. Hen Ogledd are weird, but also welcoming.