Single: Lupen Crook – Goodbye Lazy Jane 
EP: Pale – Idols 
Single: Honey I’m Home – Soon 
Single: Lupen Crook – Goodbye Lazy Jane
Britain’s best-kept songwriting secret returns with a tender and witty acoustic number, ably assisted by an assorted cast of talented helpers.
EP: Pale – Idols
Idols makes you live through love, heartbreak and pain but serves it in a dreamy sound to soften the blow.
Single: Honey I’m Home – Soon
We’ve all chased the thing that was supposed to make us happy, only to find another one waiting behind it. “Soon” turns that endless chase into a song.
Album: Sky Is Alright – FINITE.
Sky Is Alright’s eight new shoegaze tracks shine a light on dark emotions, and help honor the memory of those we mourn.
Single: mayva – turpentine
The lush production keeps the immediacy of an actual for-real rock band, which is more rare than it ought to be.
Single: Sevun – Afterglow
Written in a basement but built for a rave in the middle of nowhere, “Afterglow” would have you dancing until you don’t feel anything else.
Odds and Ends, but Mostly Ends – EP from Huxlii
A brush of fantasy with the grit and grime of the underground.
Single: Ella Aslin – Take the Blame
Ever wish you could meet someone again for the first time and do it right? “Take the Blame” sings that wish out loud, and it sounds as soft and sad as it feels.
Single: Ted Bunny – Out For Blood
He sings a love spell into the world and hopes she hears it, “Out For Blood” makes you believe in the magic of love.
EP: simple socks – Joanna Drive
simple socks sings about how it feels to step into a world that feels like rampant traffic, and take part in it for the first time without holding someone’s hand.
Single: That Old Quiet Lighthouse – Special Boy
The Manchester-based songwriter drops an introspective single with indie-emo-folk flair, which talks to the past and reflects on a mental health journey.
Album: Walden – Funeral For A Band
Faced with their possible demise – this Denver-based atmospheric rock band may well have made the music of their lives.
Single: Dream Jeans – My Love, Half Real
Some songs tell you a story. This one just lets you sit inside a feeling, written by someone who says half these words are true and the other half are just words.
Album: Mega Fäuna – softmore
On their first full-length album, the Sydney band explore femininity, balancing transcendence and immanence in both the lyrics and music.
Single: Laughing About Nothing – Casey Jones
Portland punk/power-pop band Laughing About Nothing turn a pet-sitting gig into a loud, chaotic, and affectionate ode to a very serious cat.
EP: dreaming at midnight – S/T
On their eponymous EP, the Polish band leaves you awash with desire, urgency, and molten longing.
Album: Rolling Boxcar International – Rolling Boxcar International
This is a terrain with gapings of stomach-dropping reminders. This is a landscape with the remains of a waiting room. This is a call to cope with the splayed guts of an extracted grief. This is a flash with dapples of fast-acting yet fleeting hope. This eponymous record by Rolling Boxcar International is a wound rope revealing itself slowly to show that what you thought was a noose is actually a lasso.
Single: Mannequin Flowers – White Silver
Mannequin Flowers’ new single embodies the visceral feeling of something holding you in, coating you and seeping through your cells.
Album: Dad Hats – wash. rinse. repeat.
The Nashville emo group’s third album shows even more polish, even as they grapple with growth, everyday minutia, and making the same mistakes.
Single: Sonny Casey – Silence
Silence by Sonny Casey is a slowburn, intricate yet sparse folksy retelling of a childhood that left more bullet holes in its wake than it ever bore a sense of being cared for in earnest.
