May 02, 2025 By Mark Moody Web Exclusive

Releasing her third album on Sub Pop in five years, Lael Neale reflects that each of the records she has put out on the label has been a reaction to living in or living away from Los Angeles.

Apr 28, 2025 By Andy Von Pip Web Exclusive

Acclaimed indie artist Samia Finnerty (who releases music simply under her first name) found an unusual creative guiding light in the quiet spaces between presence and absence. Her latest album, the spellbinding Bloodless, explores how what’s missing can take on an outsized presence in our minds.

Apr 25, 2025 By Andy Von Pip Web Exclusive

Mortal Primetime, the fourth album from Sunflower Bean, very nearly didn’t happen. In the years following their previous release, 2022’s Headful of Sugar, the band’s future hung in the balance. Julia Cumming (vocals, bass), Nick Kivlen (guitar, vocals), and Olive Faber (drums) had scattered geographically and thrown themselves into other creative pursuits. During that time, they also weathered personal upheavals—grief, growth, and everything in between.

Apr 24, 2025 By Ben Jardine Web Exclusive

The arc of history is punctuated by losses and discoveries. Entire languages are lost, solely to be remembered in texts or hardened tablets. Animals die out, their existence demarcated by the bones they leave behind. Works of art are lost too, often without a trace. What then is history but a temporary preservation of things that will eventually be lost? And if all will inevitably be swept away by the tides of time, what, then, is the whole point of it all?

Apr 21, 2025 By Andy Von Pip Web Exclusive

One of the first things that strikes you about Tripla, the debut album from Miki Berenyi Trio, is its distinctive, layered sense of rhythm.

Apr 16, 2025 By Dom Gourlay Web Exclusive

Montreal duo DVTR release a live album this month (April 2025) entitled “Live Aux Foufs”, so Under the Radar caught up with the two main protagonists Demi Lune and Jean Divorce

Apr 11, 2025 By Marina Malin Web Exclusive

Florist’s music creates a safe sanctuary with its rare kind of tenderness, intimacy, and deeply human quality. Since emerging with their 2016 debut, The Birds Outside Sang, the project led by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emily Sprague has gently guided listeners through grief, growth, and the natural world.

Apr 10, 2025 By Mariel Fechik Web Exclusive

I once described the music of SPELLLING (the moniker of Bay Area singer/songwriter Chrystia Cabral) as what you might imagine the inside of a crystal ball to sound like. I’m not sure if I even knew what I meant by this at the time, though looking back, I think I could only have meant that her music is at once unfathomably mystical and deeply rooted in the Earth. She is someone who is equally inspired by ‘90s pop as she is obscure French surrealist literature, as interested in strange, homemade synth patches as she is arranging a chamber group with bassoon, strings, and harp.

Apr 09, 2025 By Kyle Mullin

Craig Finn does everything from spoken word to singing and holding high notes on his newly released sixth solo album, Always Been (out now on Tarmac and Thirty Tigers). The fact that he pushes himself as a singer on standout track “A Man Needs a Vocation” may come as a surprise to the fans of his legendary indie rock band The Hold Steady. That’s because he has long been known for working elaborate lyricism and a heartfelt delivery into the limits of his voice.