Indierock | Alternative Tape 454 Items

Featuring members of Smith Westerns & Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the ten songs on this record sound like they could have been written at any time in the last 50 years

"Back to Mystery City" by Hanoi Rocks channels the grit and glamour of the urban underground, intertwining sleazy rock riffs with poetic lyricism. It's a sonic journey through the shadows of city streets, showcasing the band's distinct fusion of punk attitude and rock 'n' roll swagger.

Hanoi Rocks' "Oriental Beat" pulsates with a unique blend of glam rock and punk energy, capturing the band's rebellious spirit against the backdrop of 1980s Helsinki. With catchy hooks and raw intensity, it solidifies their status as pioneers of the Finnish rock scene.

Lutalo's highly visceral folk goes electric on The Academy,the Vermont multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer'sdebut LP. Recorded in January 2024 at the storiedSonic Ranch and self-produced along with Jake Aron (SnailMail, Protomartyr, L'Rain), The Academy feels like watchingthe best underground film you've seen in years; establishingLutalo as a singular voice of this generation of indie rock.Lutalo describes The Academy as their "first chapter" - atime capsule of the lessons they've learned in their20-something years of life. "This record is exactly that: a`record' of my early life," they say of their debut album, outvia Winspear. "The experiences, thoughts and feelings I washolding at those times and am currently processing. To me,this is the first big stamp of my existence I'm sharing."While Lutalo's 2022 EP Once Now, Then Again introducedthem as a lo-fi acoustic guitar wunderkind, The Academy isbigger and bolder without compromising Lutalo's invitingsense of emotional intimacy, inspired by alt-rock veteranslike Thom Yorke and Rob Crow as well as electronic greatslike Aphex Twin and Bowery Electric. The Academy'sgrander arrangements are heard in the biting adrenalinerush of "Ocean Swallows Him Whole," or the anti-war jangleof album closer "The Bed." Their lyrics are often deeplyintuitive, flowing as a stream of consciousness, albeit withweighty meanings. With their unique baritone and finessefor lyrical world building, Lutalo cuts to the bone-while onlyjust beginning to reveal the depth of their artistry and vision.

While Duster went into hibernation in theyear 2000, Clay Parton's four-track neverstopped rolling. Recorded alone at homeover several years, Birds In The Groundis an album of 30-something, post-9/11malaise. Under his Eiafuawn (EverythingIs All Fucked Up And What Not) acronym,Parton hides beneath layers of fuzzy andclean guitars, his hesitant, cottony vocaldisappear into noise. This deluxe pressingis packaged in a gorgeous tip on sleeveand includes the complete lyrics for thiscryptic entry of the Dusterverse.

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound _ handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul _ takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer's resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self."

DestructionDerby(Remixes and Alternative Mixes) is a collection of the remixes and alternative mixesfrom the era of their debut album - Future Primitive. Reconfigured by the finest minds in underground rock n roll and trashed onto a mixtape cassette, the mixtape brings together remixes of Data Animal along side remixes undertaken by Data Animal of other artists.DestructionDerbyis out on cassette and digitally May 31st , only on Dedstrange.

Finally! A Doc Hopper release on Dead Broke! 90's pop-punk underdogs from the greater New England area & some of the best to do it. This is a collection of demos, leftovers + non-LP cover songs. First collected in 2000 intended for a disbanded Go-Kart Records release. Only self-released by band on CDRs for “final” year of shows back then. Art by Ray Ahn (the Hard-ons) Color by Tom Lowell. 100 Puke Green Tapes pressed.

Los Campesinos! have become one of the most important and influential cult acts in the UK since they formed in the mid-2000s. Starting out in the Cardiff indie scene and soundtracking Budweiser adverts, the seven-piece’s musical evolution since then has been slow, steady and remarkable. From the frenzied chaos of debut album Hold On Now, Youngster… (2008) through 2010 breakthrough Romance is Boring and the self-mythologising of latter day highlights NO Blues (2013) and Sick Scenes (2017), their discography is an interconnected web of niche references, big swings and unflinching honesty.

Making self-professed sleeper hits for weeping dipshits, they’re as influenced by The Beautiful South as they are US emo, with emotional intensity and connection always at the core. Their lyrics are a treasure trove of football references, tales of romantic woe and painfully frank exorcisms, which have been tattooed across hundreds of fans’ bodies and served as comfort and insight during that break-up you had (there’s a reason the band’s tagline is “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band”).

Now with the release of All Hell, Los Camp! approach their third decade as a band more brilliant, more potent and more vital than ever.

You could call Wishy's story a lucky one. After prior monikers anditerations, Wishy was born as a kaleidoscope of alternativemusic's semi-recent history, with traces of shoegaze, grunge andpower-pop swirling together. On Triple Seven, Indiana songwritersKevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites' musical synergy provesitself to be a rare one-the kind that sounds like someone strikinggold. Part sly wink and part warm gratitude, it's only fitting theirmuch anticipated full length debut is titled Triple Seven, whereWishy's penchant for indelible hooks is couched equally inpillowy atmospherics and scathing distortion.By day Krauter works as a music teacher, giving drum and guitarlessons to students, while Pitchkites is a seamstress by tradeand often makes embroidered merch for the band. Coming up ina scene defined by hardcore and emo, Krauter and Pitchkitesinstead found themselves writing melodies in their heads whiledriving to work, pulling music from the air and arriving at a blearier,more ethereal interpretation of Midwest expanse. Initially, theirmusic oscillated between hazy dream-pop and heavier alt-rock.The subject of their songs create a loose web of vignettes andsnapshots, capturing Krauter and Pitchkites in a whirlwindcouple of years _ exiting the pandemic, embarking on an embryonicproject, making sense of their musical pasts while forging amusical future alongside one another, each of them on a journeyof self-acceptance and self-understanding. Sometimesgorgeous, sometimes festering, and always cathartic, TripleSeven is a vibrant and exhilarating document of self-discoverywith the scope and heft of the bygone big-budget rock albumsthat inspired it.

Sliding between the bodies in the street, cutting across the contrails that bisect our sky, Wand find melody and the anxiety beats as they hum the soundtrack for a new gravitational center. Seeking connections against the plan of niche interest and anonymity, Vertigo is the sound of slippage, rocks of contradiction (in soft focus); feet lost, regained, lost again, a multi-chromatic swaying, more automatic, associative, directed, in time.Determining to work backwards (or at least insideout) this time, Wand recorded everything in their own studio; pieces cut from improvisations and reshaped, writing from within the performance, without the woodshed. Unconsciously, in the shadow of themselves, and turning round and round (and round), they kept finding that empty space and playing what it implied. Everybody took on a new position in addition to the old one. It was intuitive, strangely ego-less . . . going somewhere they"d never been and not knowing what they were doing, but committing and recommitting, unafraid to eject in a constant positive forward momentum.

In 2023, downt showed further expansion of their activities by collaborating with many overseas artists such as Gestalt Girl (Taiwan), Grrrl Gang (Indonesia), Pswingset (us), and deathcrash (uk), and releasing the epic single "Undecember", which showed a new direction as a band. The long-awaited full-length album will finally be released in March 2024 from P-vine! The new album also features re-recorded versions of their iconic songs such as '111511', 'mizu ni naru' and 'AM4:50', which were included in previous eps and beloved by fans.

Temir Alcy (producer Enir Da - Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm and multi-instrumentalist Charles Lmx) is at the junction of spherical textures of acoustic clouds and shapeshifting forms of immersive electronic percussive patterns. By intertwining etherionic atmospheres and organic moods to magnetic and hypnotic rhythms, Temir Alcy explores the mysteries of the future and the unknown through a journey of sensory trance, where whispers and melodies of voices strike a vivid contrast between emotions’ fragility and sound’s solidity enhanced by a downtempo, leftfield and erratic kraut’s feel.

LAKE's 2009 album Let's Build A Roof [KLP213], produced by Northwest legend Karl Blau, is sweet, funky and nostalgic - a paragon of psychedelic pop. Originally, this landmark album had overlooked sonic anomalies now corrected by REMASTERING. Five bonus songs have been added to the DIGITAL ALBUM, creating a whole new Let's Build a Roof.Let's Build A Roof is LAKE's most popular album with many fan favorites, though every track is unique. After extensive touring in 2009, LAKE entered Dub Narcotic Studio (Olympia, Wash.) to record fresh with their live energy. In the studio they were able to fill out their jingly pop aesthetic, enhanced with the vintage sounds of instruments available at Dub Narcotic and the local community. Blazing synth solos, timpani, flutes, saxophones, cello, and marimba, are just some of the featured sounds on Let's Build a Roof.Some of the album's most requested songs: "Madagascar," a dubby, slow-groove track; "Christmas Island" a surfy Phil Spector-sounding song used as theme music for the television in show Adventure Time; and "Don't Give Up", an upbeat motivating dance song with Blau performing the hook on harmonized saxophones; "Gravel" is the first single and has that a driving intensity that we can all deeply relate to - trying to keep up.

Introducing Jahnah Camille (pronounced Hannah), a young artistemerging from the DIY scene of Birmingham, Alabama. Camille'ssongs capture the rollercoaster of teenage angst, heartbreak andintrospection over a well-made bed of driving guitars and catchy,compact melodies. A five-track EP infused with anxiety and grit, i triedto freeze light, but only remember a girl, is a shining introductoryproject smoothed over by Camille's sugar-sweet voice and cuttinglyricism.Much of the EP's songs were written and recorded while Camille wasstill in high school, taking trips back and forth from Atlanta to record.In the time following, Camille dug into the local DIY scene, steadilygaining an impressive resume of opening slots as she cut her teethsupporting acts like Clairo, Soccer Mommy, Cryogeyser andWednesday as they came through town. Now 19 years old, Camilledelivers an excellent snapshot of those uncertain and wildly hopefullate teen years. i tried to freeze light captures Camille approachingheartbreak and self-perception from a variety of angles-each trackplaying slightly with genre and cadence and infused with influencefrom her musical heroes, like Liz Phair and Fiona Apple.The EP pulls at a range of alternative rock and pop threads, there'sthe 90s alternative rock opener "flesh" and the country-gaze-tinged"roadkill." Camille then softens on the swooning synth-layered ode tolove lost, "elliot," before relaxing into a folksy, acoustic "paper doll."Iwanna talk and not spill out carnival sounds" Camille confides oncloser "carnival sounds"--a track that illuminates the singer's art-popinfluences and knack for revealing tender and at times searing admissionsthrough her lyricism. While misunderstandings color theemotional sentiment of the EP, Camille's artistry and expressioncome through clear as day on i tried to freeze light, presenting her asa promising young voice with real talent and a hunger for musicalexperimentation.

A sprawling patchwork of the artist’s dreams and fears, Parannoul’s third album After the Magic explores the enigmatic solo artist’s life in the wake of his second album’s overnight success.

Expanding on the shoegaze-shaded emo that made Parannoul’s To See the Next Part of the Dream so beloved by lo-fi and indie rock fans alike, After the Magic sees the anonymous auteur striving to write a follow-up as worthy of acclaim as the last.

Across the album’s ten songs, Parannoul plunges yet deeper into his diverse pool of influences, coming back to the surface with a record that captures and extends the magic of its predecessor. Unexpected flashes of orchestral ambient and glitched-out electronica meld seamlessly with Parannoul’s signature passages of noisy, distortion-laden shoegaze, offering a real time glimpse into the maturation of one of indie rock’s most exciting artists.