The Making of Luna’s Penthouse

Here’s one to put on in the background while you do other things – an interview Dean Wareham gave to the Life Of The Record podcast back in 2021 about the making of Luna’s majestic 1995 album Penthouse on the occasion of the album’s 25th anniversary. Well it’s not an interview, really, but 45 minutes […]

DIIV – “Soul-Net”

Brooklyn’s DIIV announced their fourth album Frog In Boiling Water – first since 2019’s Deceiver – last week with the chilled-out dirge “Brown Paper Bag”, but they first previewed the new record way back in October while in the midst of their tour supporting Depeche Mode. They dropped the website soul-net.co, a Geocities-saluting doomscrolling eyesore, […]

Warpaint – “Common Blue”

Happy Valentine’s Day! Warpaint are celebrating their 20th anniversary as a band with this new song, being released as a 7″ – available now – and with an accompanying video that condenses the glitz and glamour of two decades spent on the road spreading gorgeous dreampop across the world down into four minutes. They describe […]

No Vacation – “Days”

I went to see San Francisco’s No Vacation on Monday night, and while there’s never a bad time to take your band on tour – though playing your first-ever Toronto show in early February might not be the most sensible thing – the timing of this cross-country outing is a little odd by conventional standards. […]

Della Zyr – “봄: 별은 노​래​한​다 (Constellation​’​s Song)”

There’s anti-marketing, and then there’s what Seoul’s Della Zyr is doing. If you were to stumble across her YouTube channel, you’d find a handful of videos of a young woman playing shoegaze cover songs in her bedroom; excellently done, certainly, but not unusual in 2024. Her Instagram offers somewhat more; it’s only four posts deep, […]

Swiimers – “Woodstock”

Here’s another entry from the promising Asian bands who may or may not still exist. Swiimers hail from Seoul, South Korea and released a handful of singles a few years ago that were compiled as a self-titled EP in 2016. Combining the delicacy of dreampop with some of the dynamism of post-rock and glitchy electronic […]

Pinkshinyultrablast – “Umi”

While I’ve had some Pinkshinyultrablast in my library for a while, it hasn’t been in heavy enough rotation such that when I discovered and fell for fellow Saint Petersburg shoegazers Blankenberge, they stylistic parallels weren’t immediately obvious to me. But now that I hear it, I can’t really unhear it. And it figures – Pinkshinyultrablast […]