Album Review: Pure X – Pure X
Pure X’s fourth record, their first in six years, has arrived. The eponymous titling of the record is fitting, not only because this feels like a new start for the band, but also…
Premiere: Good Sport’s “Big Push”
Streaming now on Spotify is Good Sport’s “Big Push,” the final single released ahead of the July 3rd release of Boring Magic, the Pittsburgh-based band’s Misra Records debut. The track spins a meta-narrative…
Planet Manhood Back With New Tape
Pop this mother in the tape deck of yer ’96 Civic and cruise the golden hour. Lo-fi and mid-tempo with just enough disappointment, Planet Manhood‘s new tape/EP has five fresh songs on side A and…
Premiere: Pet Clinic Looks Inward on No Face
We are thrilled to premiere Pet Clinic’s full-length debut No Face, streaming now on their website. Following 2012’s six-song EP The Dust That Made The Fire That Made The Light, the Pittsburgh five-piece…
PREMIERE: David Bernabo’s New Experimental Album The Inn
David Bernabo officially drops The Inn this Friday, but Pop Press is thrilled to stream the album in its entirety today. It’s a solo record and the 10th on the Ongoing Box imprint….
delicious pastries Explore The Creative Process With aleatoric delay
We at Pop Press Intl are honored to announce Pittsburgh’s delicious pastries is back with its long-awaited follow-up to 2011’s Pretty Please, an eight song sophomore LP titled aleatoric delay, released on the cryptic Totally Snakes…
Velo Releases Spring Installment of Their Four-part Album
We reported a few months ago about Austin band Velo’s debut EP. Now, the band has shared the second installment of what will be a four-part release constituting an album’s worth of material…
Courtney Barnett’s Claim to the Throne: ACL Taping Review
Australia’s Courtney Barnett sits poised to become the queen of indie rock. As Austin City Limits’ Terry Lickona noted last night before Barnett took the stage: it’s rare for artists to perform on…
Viva El Campo
Arriving in Austin a few years ago, I anticipated diving headfirst into the Austin music experience, determined to mine the healthy reserves of musical minerals. One of those first offerings came on a cool…
Attendance Records Teaches Students to See The World, Differently
Non-profit organization Attendance Records is prepared to release their new album–The World, Differently–composed of material culled from a collaboration with high school students and some accomplished Austin musicians. They will celebrate the release with a…
I Made Love To My Girlfriend While Listening To Father John Misty’s Baby-Makin’ Record I Love You, Honeybear: A Critique and One-sided Dialogue
Included in the packaging for the physical LP of Father John Misty’s sophomore follow up, I Love You, Honeybear, is a thin pamphlet titled, “Exercises for Listening.” It’s an extensive instruction manual for…
Album Review: Mount Eerie – Sauna: Pop Press Pick
Phil Elverum is the James Joyce of Anacortes, Washington. Although any one of his works may not equate to the singular force of Ulysses, his cohesive and monolithic body of work as a…
Album Review: Iceage – Plowing Into the Field of Love (Pop Press Pick)
Danish punk band Iceage’s new album Plowing Into the Field of Love moves the band into more structured sonic terrain and showcases increasingly complex arrangements while holding onto a sense of chaos and raw energy….
Album Review: Foxygen’s “…And Star Power”
As we approach this weekend and the wonderfulness that is Fun Fun Fun Fest, Pop Press International is greasing the gears and filling the tank, ready to tackle yet another successful festival at…
Album Review: His Name Is Alive – Tecuciztecatl
If any album this year is vying to carry the torch of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” for best-played alongside a muted version of Wizard of Oz, it’s Tecuciztecatl, the fourteenth…
Photo Gallery: Sinkane with Helado Negro at Empire
Electro-jazz band Sinkane and the ambient, moody Helado Negro, both Brooklyn-based, played Empire Control Room Sunday night, as part of the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls party presented by Heard Entertainment and Vulcan Video, while 1970s-themed costume…
Album Review: This Will Destroy You – Another Language
For a band, the name This Will Destroy You certainly invokes the expectation of heavy metal or hard rock, yet the sounds of this group’s third studio album, Another Language, couldn’t be anything…
Album Review: Niagara – Don’t Take It Personally
Italian experimental duo Niagara have been turning heads and perking ears since their debut album Otto dropped onto the scene last year. Their follow-up, Don’t Take It Personally, released earlier this month on…
Album Review: Terry Malts — Insides EP
Garage-punk trio, Terry Malts releases new material this week via Slumberland Records with a 7” entitled Insides EP. The story of Terry Malts’ formation isn’t one that you’ll hear from the direct source, rather the…
Album Review: Odesza – In Return
When club music veers into alternative territory, splashes through the waters of chillwave and resurfaces amongst the electronica glitter, you get the sound that is Odesza. For sure, the Seattle duo’s first full…
Barcelona with The Young Wild at Holy Mountain: Live Review
Monday night atop the Mountain, Seattle band Barcelona immersed the grooving audience in melodic songs of old and new. The trio released the final component to their three part EP series, The Melodrama, in March, revealing yet…
Album Review: Ty Segall – Manipulator
At summer’s unofficial close, Drag City cranked out yet another Ty Segall album, Manipulator. Since 2008, Segall has stayed monumentally busy, pushing out at least one album per year. And what’s even more…
Album Review: Bishop Allen – Lights Out
Bishop Allen hasn’t released an album since 2009. Their newest effort, Lights Out, dropped via Dead Oceans earlier this week. “Start Again” and “Why I Had to Go,” the album’s first two songs,…
Album Review: Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats) – EDJ
Eric D. Johnson is no stranger to the world of indie rock, collaborating with bands like the Shins, Califone, Vetiver, and his personal songwriting vehicle, the Fruit Bats. Leaving behind that moniker, Johnson (known solo…
Album Review: The Mole People – Lost Age (Pop Press Pick)
The Mole People’s Lost Age has undeniably classic appeal—think early David Bowie or Blondie fronted by a charismatic and unhinged dude rather than Debbie Harry. Or if you want a (fittingly) less common…
Album Review: Daniel Bachman – Orange Co. Serenade
Today we find ourselves in the sweat of Daniel Bachman’s newest work, Orange Co. Serenade, out on Asheville label, Bathetic Records. Known for its predilection to experimental music with a folk bent, Bachman…
Album Review: Melted Toys – Melted Toys
The psychedelic-pop wake is currently making its second resurgence in the music scene with a vengeance, and it shows no sign of losing momentum. New bands are constantly emerging to join the in-crowd…
Album Review: Skygreen Leopards – Family Crimes
Shimmering, shining and alive. Breathing, enveloping and visceral. San Francisco’s Skygreen Leopards are back with their (more or less) eighth release, Family Crimes, conjuring mystic California dreamscapes and pastoral nature-folk vibes that would…
Album Review: White Reaper – White Reaper
Louisville, Kentucky’s latest band spawn doesn’t carry the slightest whiff of bluegrass or the faintest whisper of country charm. White Reaper leaves the acoustic ramblings in the dust with their self-titled debut EP…
Album Review: Sharon Van Etten – Are We There (Pop Press Pick)
An ethereal haunting. A beautiful ache. Broken love and scars that smile. Life is no black and white analysis, but is made up of a complex series of contradictory feelings all competing to…
Album Review: Popstrangers – Fortuna
New Zealand band Popstrangers’ new album, Fortuna, the band’s sophomore follow up to Antipodes is out now on Carpark Records. Because of or despite a certain degree of chaos that can be found…
Album Review: Bobby Bare, Jr. – Undefeated
Undefeated, Bobby Bare Jr.’s fourth album with his Young Criminals’ Starvation League, anchors him ever deeper into the soil of American music. Channeling decades of influence from his own father to the hollows…
Album Review: Protomartyr – Under Color of Official Right
Moving between new wave and post punk, Protomartyr’s newest effort Under Color of Official Right consists of propulsive percussion, catchy guitars, and detached coolness. The group has managed to take all the best tendencies of New Order and Gang…
Album Review: Sylvan Esso – Sylvan Esso
Over the last year or so albums like Taken By Trees’ Other Worlds and Wild Belle’s Isles have bridged the gap between electronic sounds and traditional rhythmic sensibilities by emphasizing beats and vocals while employing contemporary production. Duo…
Album Review: Tiny Ruins – Brightly Painted One
Delicate lyrics, soft vocals and powerful instrumentation combine to form a standout sophomore record from New Zealand natives Tiny Ruins. Brightly Painted One, out this week on Bella Union, took three years to…
Album Review: Papercuts – Life Among the Savages
When a band takes a three year hiatus in between albums, it’s usually a fair assumption that they’ve been working not only on new music, but a reinvention or transformation from what they…
Album Review: PAWS – Youth Culture Forever
It’s hard to imagine that an album full of passionately fuming lyrics could be so fun to listen to, but the sophomore record from the male trio PAWS proves that it’s possible. Youth…
Album Review: Pink Mountaintops – Get Back
As we approach Austin’s 7th annual Psych Fest hosted by Austin psych-heads The Black Angels, we find a lineup up that stays true to its cosmic breadth. From electronic button-smashing to four-piece outfits…
Album Review: Wyrd Visions – Half-Eaten Guitar
Visions is true folk-metal. There’s repetition for the sake of repetition, casting off expectations for a big build. On the opening track “Sigill,” fragile vocals come in after 2:30 of the same acoustic guitar riff….
Album Review: RF Shannon – Hunting Songs (Pop Press Pick)
RF Shannon must’ve been born at some pre-dawn hour—those long, slow hours where minutes tick away like lingering drips from a leaky faucet. The Texas air is thick and humid. The roar of…
Album Review: Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks – Enter the Slasher House
With so much hype surrounding Avey Tare’s new band, it would easy to disappoint and fall below expectations. The bar has been set high with Animal Collective’s reputation. However, with Enter the Slasher House…
Album Review: Elephant – Sky Swimming
Elephant’s debut album Sky Swimming features pop roots and a mellow vibe, generated by duo Amelia Rivas and Christian Pinchbeck. The two formed Elephant three years ago and have been creating notable music…
Album Review: Nat Baldwin – In the Hollows
Nat Baldwin’s upcoming release, In the Hollows, is an avant-garde approach to the man meets acoustic tradition. The album remains saturated with emotional depth, but instead of concentrating all his sound into one…
Album Review: WOODS – With Light and With Love
Last year’s Bend Beyond was great without qualification. Still, that album can now be seen as a clear forerunner, a first run at a stylistic range, for WOODS’ new album With Light and…
Album Review: Withered Hand – New Gods
Looking at the expansive horizon of electronic music that dominates popular music with seemingly endless references to decades and trends that spiral into a feedback loop of self-referential bologna, artists like Withered Hand,…
Album Review: TEEN – The Way and the Color
TEEN’s second full-length LP, The Way and Color, strays far from the work of other all-girl bands. The eccentric and psychedelic tunes make TEEN’s music difficult to classify into a single genre. From…
Album Review: Temples – Sun Structures
Did LSD bring out more music or did the music bring about more LSD? With Foxygen, Tame Impala, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Melody’s Echo Chamber and a slew of other similarly grounded groups on…
Album Review: Mac DeMarco – Salad Days
Contrary to belief, you DO make friends with salad. If Bart Simpson grew up to form a band, no one could better compare than Mac DeMarco. Both children of the 90’s with a knack for…
Album Review: White Hinterland – Baby
White Hinterland’s new album Baby, out this week on Dead Oceans, is a genre-transcendent feat of genius, fusing R&B, electronic pop, and piano balladry. At times, the record’s aural components are remarkably straightforward,…
Album Review: New Bums – Voices in a Rented Room
The compilation Ben Chasney and Donovan Quinn create as New Bums on their debut album, Voices in a Rented Room is as well matched as stale cigarettes and a heavy pour of whiskey…
Album Review: The Men – Tomorrow’s Hits (Pop Press Pick)
Unlike other varieties of bears, polar bears are nomadic, moving from food source to food source, forsaking territory in favor of satiating their appetite. The Men are like that, and they still aren’t…
Album Review: Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witness (Pop Press Pick)
I had no idea that the points of reference for Burn Your Fire For No Witness, the new album from Angel Olsen, would be Patsy Cline and Leonard Cohen. Simply put: I had no…
Stream New EP From Whiite Walls Now; Release Show Friday
Whiite Walls is 1979. The band’s new EP embodies that musical era when the lines between dance and punk began to blur. There’s a little bit of disco, lots of hi-hat, twinkling guitar…
Album Review: I Break Horses – Chiaroscuro
I still remember the first time I listened to the song “Winter Beats” by Swedish dream-pop band I Break Horses; I was only just discovering indie music then and its icy, synth-driven cascade…
Album Review: Damien Jurado – Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (Pop Press Pick)
Damien Jurado’s new album Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, out earlier this month on Secretly Canadian, is a complex folk fever dream of an album—mysterious, dense, magical. I have fallen desperately…
Album Review: Lanterns on the Lake – Until the Colours Run
Lanterns on the Lake released their sophomore album in The States, Until the Colours Run at the start of this year. Preceding their current release was the debut album, Gracious Tide, Take Me…
Album Review: Jess Williamson – Native State (Pop Press Pick)
Austin songstress Jess Williamson has been saving up Native State for a while, and the results are rewarding. Be assured: this is not a record of pop gems; this is not an attempt…
Pop Press International’s Most Played Tracks & Albums of 2013
Welcome to my year-end reflection on the past twelve months’ best songs and albums. This post is long. I dare you to read it all. If you’re just here for the list, scroll…
Album Review: Mount Eerie – Pre-Human Ideas
The day’s light is almost gone. The street that leads you home is the same as it always has been. Yet as the early winter, dusky light bounces through the branches of the…
Album Review: Arcade Fire – Reflektor (Pop Press Pick)
Arcade Fire’s fourth full-length album Reflektor is a marvelous achievement. Working for the first time with former LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy, the band has created a complex album, stylistically diverse yet…
Album Review: Cass McCombs – Big Wheel and Others
Cass McCombs has created music that ranges from odd, reverb laden rock, PREfection’s “Subtraction” and “Equinox,” to somber folk, A’s “Gee It’s Good To Be Back Home,” to ethereal pop, Wit’s End’s “County Line.” Most recently,…
Album Review: Nadine Shah – Love Your Dum and Mad
There is a terror and a tenderness to the wildly forlorn, hauntingly seductive sound to London-based artist Nadine Shah’s songs, which are given full berth in her debut album Love Your Dum and…
Why You Should Be at The Mohawk Tonight with Attendance Records and Belaire
In a book called Break Point and Beyond by George Land and Beth Jarman, they cite a study conducted by land in which he tested a group of students for their aptitude at divergent…
Album Review: Sonny and the Sunsets – Antenna to the Afterworld
On the surface, Sonny and the Sunsets’ most recent album Antenna to the Afterworld is an immediately likable and enjoyable album. However, it also possesses deeper rewards within its earnest subject matter, conceptual…
Album Review: Scout Niblett – It’s Up to Emma
Scout Niblett’s newest effort It’s Up To Emma, out now on Drag City, presents a collection of raw, sparse, and eerie electric folk songs that sprawl out in moody tendrils. For those unfamiliar…
Album Review: Ashley Eriksson – Colours
Perhaps it’s not limited to the Pacific Northwest, but the region does boast an impressive ability to capture a sense of place. That ability has differed over the years, from bands like Bikini…
Album Review: Royal Forest – Spillway
From the first snippets of sound and previews of songs that preceded Royal Forest’s new album Spillway, I’ve been pumped for the release of this album. The band’s frontman Cody Ground has been…
Album Review: The Mantles – Long Enough to Leave
The Mantles have released their latest album, Long Enough to Leave on Slumberland Records. Their self-titled debut album was a high-energy collection of quirky garage rock songs that carried influences of classic punk….
Album Review: Smith Westerns – Soft Will
Don’t let their Chicago-claimed roots mislead you; Smith Westerns might be the most British sounding band you’ll hear this decade. Possessing only a vague familiarity with this group, it was a good thing…
Album Review: Selebrities – Lovely Things
There are Eighties flashbacks aplenty in the second album from Brooklyn-quartet Selebrities, whose finely-honed expression of new-wave, nu-disco synth-pop keep bringing flickering scenes of late-night mopey teenage-laments to my mind — the kinds…
Album Review: Heliotropes – A Constant Sea
Heliotropes make their music in a Brooklyn studio, but the all-female band’s musicians originally hail from all over the nation. It’s no wonder then, that their music is a collaboration of many influences…
EP Review: Trails and Ways – Trilingual
Trails and Ways’ Trilingual EP is an amalgamation of both Californian musical tradition, and gathered inspiration of international influences. When lead singers Keith Brower Brown and Emma Oppen returned from Brazil and Spain…
EP Review: Alex Burkat – Tarot
Out this week on the Los-Angeles based label 100% Silk, Tarot arrives from the mind of Brooklynite musician Alex Burkat. The four-track EP, purportedly inspired by “mysticism and global warming,” loops its way…
Album Review: Coma Cinema – Posthumous Release
Coma Cinema’s Posthumous Release isn’t a grand departure from previous albums, nor is it a game-changing, genre-creating, undefinable album, the likes have never been heard before. Rather, it is an improvement and polish…
Album Review: Polysick – Under Construction
Arriving this week via 100% Silk, the four-track EP Under Construction from Rome-based producer Polysick grooves with all the strange fervor gleaned from its Chicago and Detriot acid-house roots. The snare-kick duo in…
Album Review: GRMLN – Empire
GRMLN’s Empire is a refreshing reminder that rock and roll can be fun. Yoodoo Park draws influences from Kyoto, his birthplace, and southern California, where the 20 year-old currently lives. Throw in 90’s…
Album Review: Jon Hopkins – Immunity
In the intro of his fourth solo album, UK electronic musician Jon Hopkins (prominently known for his collaboration with Coldplay) takes us through a locked door and into a lone hallway where the…
Album Review: W-H-I-T-E – III
W-H-I-T-E’s third and most recent album, III, is a collection of sounds ranging from dreamy acoustic guitar to psychedelic electric pop. The project was created by Los Angeles-based musician and visual artist, Cory…
Album Review: Octo Octa – Between Two Selves
Listening to Between Two Selves, the new album from Brooklyn producer Michael Morrison (aka Octo Octa) out on the 100% Silk label, is like stepping into a cool electronic current and letting all…
Album Review: Radiation City – Animals in the Median
Radiation City’s Animals in the Median is an album of quirky, off-kilter little pop songs that owe as much to the Crystals and the Shangri La’s as they do the Pacific Northwest haven of creative…
Album Review: Club 8 – Above the City
Club 8’s newest and eighth album, Above the City has taken the Swedish twee-pop duo into a more electronic and industrial direction. Club 8 has recently reclaimed their self-produced status under Johan Angergård’s…
EP Review: TEEN – Carolina
Carolina, the new EP from Brooklyn’s TEEN, features an impressively varied and divergent array of sounds across its five songs. The EP is a follow-up to last year’s well-received and buzzed about full…
Album Review: Cloud Boat – Book of Hours
Cloud Boat has created ambient and transcendental music in their first full length release, Book of Hours. This London duo doesn’t subscribe to contemporary compositional styles, injecting electronic elements into mournful ballads, like…
Album Review: Brazos – Saltwater (Pop Press Pick)
A period of inexplicably silent years separates Brazos’s adored 2009 release Phosphorescent Blues and their new album Saltwater, out today on Dead Oceans. Not only years but also geographical distance separates the Brazos…
Album Review: Free Time – Free Time
The self-titled debut album from New York indie-garage group Free Time, headed by Melbourne transplant Dion Nania and out this week via Underwater Peoples, strives for an unhurried, unworried charm with easy melodies…
Album Review: Alex Bleeker and the Freaks – How Far Away
Formed by the bassist of Real Estate, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks drops their second album this week, How Far Away, out on the Woodsist label. Having assembled a motley crew of bandmates…
Album Review: Saturday Looks Good To Me – One Kiss Ends It All
Before indie pop and beachy lo-fi songs became entrenched as a major facet of independent music, before Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Best Coast, of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart captured…
Album Review: Majical Cloudz – Impersonator (Pop Press Pick)
Here’s the thing about Majical Cloudz’ new album Impersonator — I can’t figure out what makes is so irresistibly good. And it very much is. More often than not, my brain over analyzes what makes…
Album Review: The National – Trouble Will Find Me
The National’s High Violet was a near perfect assemblage of songs that utilized a distinct and arresting sonic palette of instrumentation that simultaneously sounded enormous while nearly vanishing into the darkness from whence it came….
Album Review: Dirty Beaches – Drifters/Love Is the Devil
Listening to the new double-album Drifters/Love is the Devil from Canadian artist Dirty Beaches aka Alex Zhang Hungtai feels rather like being trapped inside someone else’s mind; particularly someone who suffers from interchanging…
Album Review: pacificUV – After the Dream You Are Awake
After the Dream You Are Awake is the fourth full album from Georgia-based indie-group pacificUV. As its title suggests, the album, which appropriately fuses mellow shoegaze, psychedelic dreamsound, and experimental space-rock, is a…
Album Review: The Blank Tapes – Vacation
The Blank Tapes’ new album Vacation, out this week on Antenna Farm Records is the sound of falling in love with summer—a collection of eleven beachy pop songs featuring infectious melodies and relentlessly…
Album Review: The Shivas – Whiteout
Shimmering guitar feedback splashes as an announcement of the onset of the Shivas’ Whiteout, released at the end of April on K Records. A piercing scream, a clear play on the song’s title…
Album Review: Mikal Cronin – MCII (Pop Press Pick)
We were greatly impressed by the balance of melody and noise on The Babies’ 2012 album Our House On The Hill, and other bands such as The Men and King Tuff have experimented with…
Album Review: Deerhunter – Monomania
One thing’s for sure: you can count on Bradford Cox to create excellent music, but you simply can’t have expectations about what that music will sound like. Monomania is the newest effort from…
Album Review: Cayucas – Bigfoot
Beachy, fun pop has been a recurring theme and the modus operandi of any number of indie rock bands over the course of the last decade or so. Not that it ever disappeared…
Album Review: Beacon – The Ways We Separate
With their debut album The Ways We Separate, Brooklyn based-group Beacon has fashioned a wholly original mode of soft electronica. From the press circulating over the album it might be interpreted that The…
Album Review: Lower Plenty – Hard Rubbish
At first glance, Lower Plenty might seem like that local group of reclusive teenagers who got together in their parent’s garage and, having dug up a few rusty guitars and found some pots…
Album Review: Brass Bed – The Secret Will Keep You
Lafayette, Louisiana based band Brass Bed’s new album The Secret Will Keep You is a swift-moving, riverine composition of indie-rock teeming with the alluvial guitar bursts and thumping bass that are deposited along…
Album Review: Phoenix – Bankrupt!
Though Bankrupt! is officially Phoenix’s fifth studio album, many listeners will likely know this album simply as a follow-up to the synth-rock band’s chart-topping success, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. As such, the main question…
