Kilby Block Party

Lorde signed to Universal Music Group in her early teens and was soon paired with producer and songwriter Joel Little (who has won Grammy Awards for songwriting and was the lead singer for New Zealand pop punk band, Goodnight Nurse). Little co-wrote and produced most of Lorde’s works, her first being “The Love Club EP” in March 2013. The EP reached the number two positions in national record charts in New Zealand and Australia.

A few months later Lorde released her debut single titled “Royals” and it was an instant, international hit. It even reached the top spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, making Lorde the youngest solo artist to have a number one US hit single (the last artist to hold to title was Tiffany and her single “I Think We’re Alone Now” in 1987). “Royals” first gained so much recognition on YouTube for its video, directed by Joel Kefali, which received over 750,000 views.

“Pure Heroine,” Lorde’s debut “indietronica” album, was released later in 2013 and predictably achieved immediate chart success in her home country and Australia. The dream-pop album also reached number three on the US Billboard 200. Other than “Royals,” singles from the album include “Team,” “Glory and Gore” and “Tennis Court.”

Lorde has also collaborated with UK house and pop duo, Disclosure, who released a remix of “Royals” (combined with Aluna George’s “White Noise”). She has also become revered as one of the most influential teenagers in popular culture, famously speaking out about feminism being “completely natural” and condemning the media for photo shopping photographs of her; even tweeting an original image of herself next to the photo shopped one, stating “two photos from today, one edited so my skin is perfect and one real. remember flaws are ok :-)”

The band takes their name from a Virginia Woolf quote. Truth be told this is quite a fitting lineage as, like Woolf herself, fewer artists give quite as convincing a portrayal of someone on the verge of a mental or nervous breakdown as Modest Mouse.

Isaac Brock’s is the man responsible for that. His voice could convincingly stand up with the likes of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Morrissey and David Bowie as one of the acquired tastes that you’ll eventually wonder how you ever did without it.

However, it’s when his guttural howl delivers his lyrics that things get truly worrying. The evocative images of everything from the endless dust bowl deserts of the American West, to the sheer expanse of space and the cold, unfeeling ocean posit how we as individual people can possibly mean anything compared to the vast canvas of existence itself. Don’t worry, there’s also some damn catchy choruses in their as well!

Catchy enough to have arguably lead the charge of indie rock into the mainstream after The Strokes and The White Stripes kicked the doors down. They have sold 1.5 million copies of April 2004’s “Good News for People Who Love Bad News”, the album which gave the world their deathless Billboard Hot 100 hit “Float On”. The follow up album 2007’s “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank”, which featured the aforementioned Johnny Marr as a member of the band for the album’s creation and subsequent tour, was certified Gold as well.

On the surface, it would seem that they are an odd band to have Gold and Platinum albums to their name, but look closer and they always temper their experimental and haunting tendencies with solid gold hooks. If R.E.M are no more, they can be satisfied in the knowledge that there are still alternative rock bands bringing literate, profound and edgy rock and roll to arenas and concert halls the world over.

Prior to the incarnation of Blood Orange, Dev Hynes had worked as a respected songwriter for the likes of Florence and the Machine and The Chemical Brothers. After contributing to the indie-roc band Test Icicles until 2006, the singer and multi-instrumentalist began working on solo material, the fruit of which was his debut solo album “Falling Off the Lavender Bridge” released in January 2008. Released under the moniker Lightspeed Champion, the album features producer Mike Mogis, singer Emmy the Great, and pianist Nate Walcott, and peaked at No. 45 on the UK Albums Chart. The album, whilst not fairing too well in the charts, did wonders for Hynes’ niche popularity and he quickly developed a devoted following.

The full-length “Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You” followed in 2010, after which the singer dropped the Lightspeed moniker and began crafting his new wave synth-inspired, silky R&B groove. Blood Orange’s debut album “Coastal Grooves” arrived in 2011 on his consistent label Domino Records. Seen somewhat as a cult figure, the album promoted Hyne’s tasteful eccentricities, after which he began collaborating with Theophilius London, Florence & the Machine, Solange Knowles, among many other high-profile acts. The follow-up “Cupid Deluxe” arrive two years later in 2013 earning widespread and universal critical acclaim. Featuring contributions from Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth, Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, and Friends’ Samantha Urbani, the album was led by the singles “Chamakay”, “You’re Not Good Enough”, and “Time Will Tell”. In 2014 the singer-songwriter embarked on a limited tour, which included a well-recieved appearance at the year’s Coachella Festival.

Father John Misty was born Joshua Tillman to an evangelical Christian family in Rockville, Maryland. Despite being a “pretty aimless kid”, in his words, from a young age Tillman was taken with the idea of being a performer. However, since secular music was forbidden in his house, the closest thing to it that he could aspire to be was a pastor, which was his ambition until the age of 17. That was the age he was at when his parents allowed him to listen to secular music that had a “spiritual theme”, leading him to discover albums like Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming”, which completely changed his life.

Tillman was already musical, having learnt the drums as a child, and then picked up the guitar at 12. Once he was able to listen to the albums that influenced him most he began to write songs, and then at the age of 21 he moved from his native Maryland, to Seattle, Washington in 2002. One of his first demos found its way to Seattle based singer-Damien Jurado, who was so impressed that by the age of 22, Tillman was opening for him on tour. After extensive touring and distributing his demos at shows for free, independent label Fargo Records released Tillman’s first solo album “Minor Works” in 2006, along with his albums “I Will Return” and “Long May You Run” in the same year as a double disk set.

In 2007, another album of Tillman’s was released called “Cancer and Delirium”, meaning that Tillman was an artist who’d released four studio albums of entirely original material in two years. For such a prolific artist, it’s a testament to his creative spirit and lack of ego that he’d then join Fleet Foxes the following year as their drummer, without any involvement in their writing process. Despite him touring with the band extensively, his solo albums still got him signed to Western Vinyl in 2009 where another two albums of his were released the same year. He stayed touring with Fleet Foxes until 2012, when he played his last show with them, changed his stage name from J. Tillman to Father John Misty and made a break for the mainstream.

Since then he’s become something of a songwriter’s songwriter, still releasing stellar solo albums, touring the world to ever increasing crowd sizes and working with everyone from rapper Kid Cudi to Parks and Recreation actress Aubrey Plaza. He’s the kind of artist that could have found success whenever he started, and we should be thankful that we’re around to see his prime. Highly recommended.

John Alexander Tatum a.k.a. Jack Tatum had been slowly raising his profile during his teenage years as a musician in the bands Jack and the Whale and FACEPAINT, in his hometown of Blacksburg. In the summer of 2009 however, Tatum began writing and recording breezy, laid back summer soundtracks under the moniker Wild Nothing. Alongside the likes of Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Beach Fossils, who were also gaining attention for their similar musical output, Tatum’s profile was first raised when his cover of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” started making waves in indie circles.

The success of the cover and subsequent tracks led Wild Nothing to sign with Captured Tracks and began touring with the musicians Jeff Haley (bass), Nathan Goodman (guitar), and Max Brooks (drums). Ahead of their debut album, the band issued the single “Summer Holiday” in 2009, followed shortly afterwards by “Cloudbusting”. The following year in May, Wild Nothing issued their debut studio album “Gemini” to a wave of critical acclaim, including a feature on Pitchforks’ Best Albums of 2010. Whilst failing to make inroads into the charts, the record endeared Tatum to the hearts of indie-music lovers the world over, and raised anticipation for future releases.

Briding the gap between another full-length release, Tatum et al. issued the EP “Golden Haze”, complete with percussive bells, clean guitars and laboured, love-inflected lyrics. Featuring Nicolas Vernhes on production duties, Wild Nothing’s sophomore full-length “Nocturne” arrived in 2012. Record at Rare Book Room Studios, the record was an extension of previous work with added skills, experience and maturity, and topped the U.S. Heatseekers Chart. Marked by Tatum’s most experimental and genre-defying work to date, he released the EP “Empty Estate” in 2013.

The band was formed by Mike Kinsella and Steve Lamos, who both played in The One Up Downstairs along with Dave and Allen Johnson, who would later form the band Very Secretary. Soon after The One Up Downstairs came together, they wrote three songs together in order to release them as a 7” vinyl on Polyvinyl Records. However, the band broke up before the record was pressed, and Kinsella and Lamos were determined to keep performing together. Together with Steve Holmes, a guitarist and mutual friend of theirs, they started putting together a new band, a band which you can tell was formed before the age of Google because they named it American Football.

The new power trio spent one year writing, recording and rehearsing before releasing their self-titled debut E.P, again through Polyvinyl Records. Like the vast majority of American underground punk releases, it was massively acclaimed by the very, very few people who heard it, but all the same, it was enough to justify the recording and release of their debut studio album, which came along in 1999. By this point, the acclaim for the album was so strong that word started to spread about the band into the overground punk scene, and the band started to attract the beginnings of a cult following.

However, the year after they released their first album, the band announced that they would become a studio only project, and soon after that the band decided to call it quits altogether, a mere three years after they’d formed. Over the 2000’s, the “American Football” album became a touchstone for the rising emo movement that took over the world of rock for a couple of years, and word about them began to spread faster than it had ever done when they were together thanks to the internet.

In 2014, nearly a decade and a half after they had split up originally, it was announced that the band were reuniting, and would tour the world over the next couple of years. Their first live shows in Illinois and New York were acclaimed as everything that fans of the band had hoped for during the time they’d been away. Unfortunately, there’s no sign yet of any new material, but there’s also no sign that they’ll be going off the road any time soon. With their technical emo rock more in favour than ever before, and the band members in the prime of their years, American Football come highly recommended.

The band members initially met at Connecticut College in 2004 and formed CYHSY shortly after, they were one of the first bands to receive their commercial break through the internet after posting demos that were well received by their early fan and a small handful of critics.In turn this gained them attention from attention from record label Witchita who released their self titled debut in 2005.

Their indie rock sound was met really well by larger publications upon the release of their debut. It achieved a Metacritic score of 84/100 indicating universal acclaim after the likes of Pitchfork and Billboard gave the album near perfect scores. CYHSY then gained more attention from press when pop icons David Bowie and David Byrne were spotted in the audience of the supporting shows. It also broke the top 40 of the UK album charts where the band had a strong following.

The follow-up in 2007 was titled 'Some Loud Thunder' and it just appeared in the UK album chart at #40 and appeared on the US Billboard chart at #47 after strong first week album sales. However this album wasn't as well received by critics, and the band didn't receive the support by publications they had enjoyed on their first.

In 2009 they announced a public hiatus so the band could work on other musical projects. They reformed in 2011 and released 'Hysterical'. In 2014 they released 'Only Run' which features the new single 'Coming Down'.

Melody Prochet first came to prominence fronting the band My Bee’s Garden, a band who supported Kevin Parker’s band Tame Impala all over Europe in 2010. Prochet and Parker struck up a friendship together just as Prochet was making plans to record a solo album. Parker offered to produce and record the album in his recording studio in Perth, Australia and Prochet gladly accepted, recording the album in 2011 in Perth and at her grandmother’s home in the south of France. Thanks to Parker’s patronage and the sheer quality of the record, the self-titled album was picked up and released in the U.S by Fat Possum Records in 2012.

Almost immediately the record enjoyed critical acclaim, gathering fawning notices by everyone from Drowned In Sound to Q Magazine, and this translated into some genuinely healthy sales for an independently released debut album, charting on the Billboard Heatseekers chart in 2013. With a second album’s release in 2015 imminent and a hugely acclaimed debut single under her belt in the form of 2014’s “Shirim”, Melody’s Echo Chamber have the world of indie rock at their feet. They seem set to follow in Tame Impala’s footsteps and become psychedelic heroes for a whole new generation of rock fans, and for that, they come highly recommended.

Exposed to music at a young age by his father Howard Kweller, Ben Kweller learned to play the drums at a mere seven years of age. When Kweller’s father returned from being the town’s first doctor in the evening, he would sing and play guitar, and young Kweller would play drums along to The Beatles, The Hollies and Jimi Hendrix. Having been taught how to play the highly-covered song “Heart and Soul” by neighbour Nils Lofgren, Kweller subsequently used the chord to create his own compositions.

In 1993 Kweller formed the group Radish with local drummer John Kent and bassist Ryan Green. Together Radish independently released two albums “Hello” in 1994 and “Dizzy” in 1995, the latter of which earned an unexpected bidding war from labels, and Radish eventually signed to Mercury Records. After releasing the full-length “Restraining Bolt” and making appearances on “The Weird Al Show”, “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “Late Show with David Letterman”, the band developed a cult following in the UK, aided by the Top 40 hit “Little Pink Stars”. As a result of a label merger, the band’s subsequent album was never released and the Kweller decided pursued a solo career.

After moving to New York, U.S. aged 19, Kweller self-released four EPs including the unreleased Radish album “Discount Fireworks”. Another EP “Freak Out, It’s Ben Kweller” caught the ear of Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, and Kweller subsequently signed with ATO Records, releasing the five-track EP “Phone Home” in 2001. The singer-songwriter’s full-length “Sha Sha” arrived a year later earning a grassroots following for the largely word out mouth method of advertising it adopted.

In 2003, Kweller, alongside Ben Folds and Ben Lee, toured Australia as The Bens and crafted a self-titled four-track EP, followed a year later with his sophomore album “On My Way”. Noted for its live recording with little overdubs and no use of headphones, Kweller supported the album with his most extensive tour to date, co-headlining with Death Cab for Cutie.

Playing all the instruments himself on the record, Kweller’s eponymously-titled third studio-album, released in 2006, was followed by another supporting tour in which the musician expanded his band to a five-piece. In 2009 his fourth full-length album “Changing Horses” was issued, after it had been leaked on to the internet, featuring more country arrangements than its predecessors. Kweller subsequently released “Go Fly a Kite” on his own label, The Noise Company, in 2014.

Automatic is Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon (bass, vocals). The band first met while immersed in L.A's DIY music scene and started jamming together in 2017.

Once they started playing out, word quickly spread about their explosive live shows and they became a mainstay on the L.A. club circuit. After their debut album Signal was released on Stones Throw Records in 2019, they began touring internationally and opening for acts such as Bauhaus. In 2022, they shared the stage with Tame Impala, Parquet Courts and IDLES. Their second album Excess is out now on Stones Throw.

Automatic is Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon (bass, vocals). The band first met while immersed in L.A's DIY music scene and started jamming together in 2017.

Once they started playing out, word quickly spread about their explosive live shows and they became a mainstay on the L.A. club circuit. After their debut album Signal was released on Stones Throw Records in 2019, they began touring internationally and opening for acts such as Bauhaus. In 2022, they shared the stage with Tame Impala, Parquet Courts and IDLES. Their second album Excess is out now on Stones Throw.