Last blog, I shared two recs that I’ve been telling people about for roughly 7 years. So today we flip that script because three out of the my four recs are artists who I’ve come across in the past week as I sought out some completely new tunes.

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Going local:

Keeping in theme with this blog and it’s interest in algorithms, curation, and how we find things, I thought I’d give the short story of how I went about finding new music this week.

One way to slip past your typical taste is to go local. Not necessarily local to where you are, but just go somewhere physical.

If I want to find something new and it seems daunting to go fishing in the great blue sea of the music across the world, searching by a geographic locality is a great way to thin the heard. It’s helpful for me to think about an artist existing within a place. Within a culture, a context, a home.

What’s going on with the music scene in Vancouver these days? Is there something interesting sounding coming out of Madrid? In my couple years in Copenhagen, I’ve been exposed to a ton of interesting artists who are super well-known locally, but haven’t yet jumped into international stardom.

Sure, music is more globalized today so that music scenes are less geographically based than before, but you still find small niches and different takes on global styles that are rooted in a local culture, language, or history.

Basically, I’m suggesting that you imagine yourself tuning into a local radio station. Not whatever your local KISS FM pop-hits station number is, where they’re playing the music you already know. Dial into one of those smaller stations that are interested in taste-making and understanding what’s going on in the local music scene.

In a broader sense, I think of it like returning to the internet of the 2000’s. Not that I had a ton of experience personally with that era, but from an information communication perspective, it was this particular sweet spot in the internet’s trajectory.

I’ll explain:

You see, at this point in history, the internet was strong enough that it allowed you unlimited access to local media from all over the world. You could find things on YouTube you had never seen before and eavsdrop on a radio station from across the world, but the old structures of curation — college radio stations, local newspapers and alt weekly's, and the user-created message boards and blogs, were still strong enough that they held significant sway in the equation of taste making. In the balancing act of global internet and local communities, the locals still held an edge, or at least the fight was fair.

And that equilibrium between far-flung globalization and tight-knit local community structure is very, very important for the outcomes of a network.

A network science aside

I promised not to get too academic, but network architecture and information transfer is one of my favorite jams, so just skip this section if you want to jump to the music.

In network science, there’s this idea that a strong, robust network must balance its global cohesion with pockets of strong local communities. Like neighborhoods within a bigger city, these are places that talk more amongst themselves than they do to outsiders.

This might sound counterintuitive at first, but the perfect network actually isn’t one where everyone is connected with everyone. Instead, it’s where local communities are tightly connected and there are enough random connections to outside communities that information can travel between them pretty quickly.

You don’t need to know everyone. You just need to know someone who knows someone and, pretty quickly, you can reach almost everyone in a way more efficient manner.

Here’s a very basic illustration of modularity.

People don’t tend to be equally likely to know anybody at random. We group ourselves into sub-communities within the larger whole. These modules might represent friend groups in a high school, social networks at different offices, or maybe multiple families. The point is that not everyone knows everyone.

And here’s a more realistic network - your brain

It isn’t just humans. Our brain connections also tend to cluster themselves within smaller communities. Here you can see how some members are closer to the center and talking more with other communities, while most members are content to talk within their own community.

Before the modern internet, we were more like a bunch of small communities without as much ability to share information, which leads to a lot of small, more individual, interesting communities. But the downside is, it’s hard to find things outside of your local cluster. Your cousin from another town had to bring that one CD for you to find something new.

The internet today has brought the world under one shared umbrella in a way that makes it so much easier to communicate, but a mostly global network flattens out all of those small communities into one big amorphous blob. Suddenly we’re all talking about the same things and it’s difficult to find anything new before it is everywhere.

A strong network (like your brain) balances these things so that you have a good weight of both global information sharing, but robust local communities to keep innovating and making new things away from the global average. You want both room for innovation and the ability to stay connected. It’s a delicate balance.

I do not think the internet is purely bad and dumbing us all. Nor do I mean to say that it is entirely global. There are still plenty of funky little pockets and entire ecospheres in languages I can’t understand doing interesting things. But I do think that many of us today are experiencing a more globalized internet thanks to recommendations serving us up more similar, more bland content and not the weirder, quirkier stuff existing out there.

Compared to before, and maybe in contradiction to recent media focus on internet “rabbit holes” caused by algorithms, I feel the modern internet is currently tilted more towards the global average.

Science portion of this blog - over.

tripple j

Back to a focus on finding those smaller communities in the sea of the internet, for this post I decided to try out a local approach to finding some new music.

I selected Australia as my “local” focus for this blog because 1) it is far enough away from my sphere of knowledge that I know very little of what is happening there and 2) I do know from my college radio DJ days that Australia is home to the radio station triple j, where I can reliably find something interesting to my ears.

The station is the “national youth broadcaster for young Australians,” a subsidiary of the national Australian Broadcasting Channel that was created to appeal to younger audiences. I think I first became aware of them through their “Like A Version” series where artists come on the show and perform their own music plus a cover, which tends to be something kind of unexpected and fun.

But my favorite aspect of the station today is their triple j Unearthed programming, specifically dedicated to finding and showcasing new and interesting talent from all around Australia.

My approach to finding artists here was basically to spend an afternoon listening to the online radio and sampling through some of their recently highlighted artists. When something stuck out to me, I noted them down and then spent the rest of the week listening through their discographies on Spotify and learning more about the artists.

And after that, I’ve come away with four artists I’d like to recommend. All of these folks are somewhere around 23-26 year old Australians with at least an album and an EP under their belts.

With that age range and the fact they are all pretty new artists, I will admit that these are all of a somewhat similar indie-pop sound that you may be familiar with. But what I like is that each artist here fills a different genre niche within indie-pop, from R&B and electronica to country and 90’s-rock.

They are also almost all from different places within Australia. I don’t know the country deeply so I couldn’t tell you the difference between the Sydney and Brisbane music scenes, but I was happy that they almost all represent a different locality.

LORA

LORA is undoubtably my favorite find from this search. The 24 year-old has a recognizable bedroom pop aesthetic similar to the likes of a Clairo or a beabadoobee, but there’s never anything wrong in doing something recognizable well - and I think LORA is doing it really well.

Lora first appeared in 2020 and writes what she calls “melancholic bangers.” From her very first singles, she was already mixing an acoustic guitar with production that featured some influences from electronic dance music and even some watered-down trap elements likes heavy bass kicks and hi-hat triplets.

Since those initial singles, her production has become more and more interesting while her lyrics and their delivery have improved dramatically. Her vocals are becoming increasingly saturated with warm reverb and layered over one another to give a dreamy feeling. She has worked with a few different producers (mostly Aussies also) who have given her tracks increasing identity and she’s at some points even drifted beyond indie-pop and into full electronica.

If you like the Clairo school of highly-produced, upbeat yet melancholic indie-pop, LORA is completely worth a listen.

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Bittersweet

My favorite of her tracks so far. It’s just an absolute banger.

There’s something going on here with the stick-tap percussion and her layered vocal tracks. From the very moment the song kicks off, there’s this propulsive feeling driving the song forward. It is the epitome of the melancholic bangers she creates. You can feel a disappointed sadness throughout the track, but you also have to fight not to bounce along with it. Truly Bittersweet.

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Drive

Similar to Bittwersweet, the beauty is in the simplicity. It’s just a really solid indie-pop bop. This one leans a bit more into a a synth-pop sound with sparkling synthesizers and a lot of little melodies playing together, but at it’s core, it’s another longing song with a head-bopping beat.

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Fence

Here’s where the the electronica influences come in and things get a bit interesting. This song immediately announces itself with a whirlwind of synths and quick metallic drumbeats. The warm vocal layering remains, but the new style of production changes the entire vibe.

The synths are doing a lot more here, with one droning note present throughout the song while other layers of synths pop in and out. There’s this prominent zipper-sounding synth melody that feels incredibly Passion Pit-esque, but the metalic beats ground the electronic in a slightly industrial feeling.

Slumber, not nescissarily my personal favorite, but she’s doing something really different here… It feel sort of NomBe inspired? Slightly Billie Eilish? Leaning heavily into distorted vocals, very predominant electronic backing,

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Lost It

And now things are totally electronic. This is one of two songs on a collab EP with producer Ukiyo, a fellow Australian from Perth who has is hown interesting discography to check out.

These two songs continue in the same trajectory, only further. LORA’s vocals are even more reverb-filled and function closer to another instrument within the mix. It’s got a much lighter and upbeat feeling than the previous tracks - it’s basically a dance hit.

Considering this is the last song we’ve gotten from LORA, from October 2023, I’m super curious to see where she’s going and if this full electronica pivot is in her future, or if she’ll bring these elements back under her own authorship and push her bedroom pop in a new direction with continued production help under her melancholic bangers.

FELIVAND

What’s with Aussie artists and their all caps names?

FELIVAND is the one artist on this list I knew before this week. A few of her songs have reached into the multi-million streams range since she released her first singles in 2018 and continued to come out with a series of increasingly impressive EPs and singles until her debut album “Ties” released in 2022.

If you haven’t heard her before, FELIVAND brings a more soulful and smooth R&B approach to her music. In the metaphorical indie-pop tower, she’s singing in the indie-pop jazz club they keep in the basement. Or whatever today’s mid-20’s version of a cabaret is. She’s fantastic to throw on the playlist if you’re having people over for dinner and wine and you want to appear both cool and modern.

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Miss My Baby

This is by far my favorite FELIVAND song and I cannot believe it doesn’t rank anywhere on her top songs. Did it somehow just not get the release push it needed? Or do people prefer FELIVAND for her slower, sultry songs so this higher-pace doesn’t fit for them?

I’m not sure but, even if you know her hits, I hope that you will check this one out.

From the first moment, the piano’s meandering rhythm gives the track a sense of searching and longing. The track feels like it is always falling forward, never quite settling into a comfortable place. Fitting for this longing, slightly desperate song about a lost love.

When the drums arrive, their pattern only pushes this sense of momentum forward, which rides throughout the song. Meanwhile, you get these beautiful layered vocals and lush, haunting vocal backing lines to fill out the rest of the song. And when there’s just this simple 4-beat hi-hat added on to the drum pattern at the end - it’s just a perfect song for me.

It kicks off strong and then keeps propeling forward, never lagging. I just want everyone to know how good this song is.

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Not Your Fault

A more classsically FELIVAND song that was also released alongside Not Your Fault at the end of last year. It’s got all the stuff that makes her great - a jazzy drumbeat with her layered vocals and a bit of edge when the electric guitar joins in. Compared to Not Your Fault, this song is taking its time and meandering towards its destination rather than tripping over itself.

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Where Were You

It doesn’t have nearly the most streams, but I personally feel like this is probably FELIVAND’s biggest hit? Or at least what I imagine to be the biggest mainstream crossover. It’s got the jazzy drums, layered and ghostly vocals, a steady, slow tempo, and it builds up into a fantastic crescendo for the chorus.

If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s well worth a listen to this Urtext to understand the sound and mood that FELIVAND creates.

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Overgrown

Another early and huge hit for FELIVAND. It’s also a great example of how her sound borrows heavily from this old, crooner-y style while also bringing in explicitly modern aspects.

For example, the hi-hats on this track are bringing in triplet patterns that pull from modern trap rap stylings. The drums in general feel closer to an 808’s style beat, rather than a jazzy drummer playing with brush strokes.

Jem Casser-Daley

I found Jem Casser-Daley on triple j thanks to her new single Texas Ain’t That Far, Is It Dear? and I got hooked immediately.

It’s just so perfectly modern pop with a country twist. It gives me big Australian Kacey Musgraves vibes. Certainly more on the pop side of this see-saw, but the country influence is still there providing some counterweight.

After getting hooked by that sound, I wanted to better understand how a Nashville pop-country twang found itself in Brisbane, and that led me down a little rabbit hole into the history of Australian country music.

I’ve only done some light Googling so far, but of course Australia has country music. The American country and folk music I know more of has roots in the heritage of English folk tunes, and Australia has that same shared English heritage. Instead of the wild American west, Aussie country can sing about the outback and life in the bush.

Jem’s father, Troy Casser-Daley, is apparently a quite famous aboriginal country musician in Australia, and that in itself is such an interesting aspect of finding music rooted in a local history and culture. How American-influenced country music can be used by an aboriginal Australian artist to tell stories of his people - it has this ironic connection to the mythos of American country music and the origin stories of the Texas lawman and America’s history with its own indigenous population. I just think it’s such a rich connection and it makes me want to learn and think more about these sorts of connections.

As a side note, the Australians have already long-ago infiltrated American country music. Did you know Kieth Urban is Australian?? And he was born in New Zealand? I’m not exactly deeply involved in country music so maybe that’s common knowledge to some, but I had no idea.

That wasn’t very much description of Jem herself, sorry Jem. But hey, music is a doorway into learning all sorts of new things, huh?

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Texas Ain’t That Far, Is It Dear?

This is Jem Cassar-Daley’s newest song that got me into her.

It is still solidly in the indie-pop sphere, but it feels the most of her music like it’s gesturing towards something slightly country. The acoustic guitar in the verses has a twangy sound to it and it’s accompanied by what sounds like a good-old slide guitar.

Lyrically, I think the song is such a fun nod to that shared country heritage between Australia and America, since it is a love song about somebody who she knew in Australia but they have moved to Austin, Texas. Jem references the physical distances of the two places and how time zones make even simple communication across the world difficult.

The way the lyrics and the instrumentation tie directly to the ideas of locality and communication in this blog - I couldn’t have scripted it any better. Plus, it’s just a really sweet and catchy bop.

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King of Disappointment

This one is Jem’s biggest song so far. It even earned her Song of the Year at Queensland Music Awards earlier this year.

It’s got a similar vibe to Texas Ain’t That Far, but with a more ballad-esque tone to it. There’s the slightly twangy acoustic guitar, accompanied by a subtle piano and the occasional longing, bluesy electric guitar. It makes sense to me that this one is what broke through for her. It’s got the heart-broken lyrics of a young pop ballad with very solid instrumentation behind it.

Maybe it’s because her father is a fixture in the industry and I’m certain that helps with connections, but of all the artists here, Jem has the most professional, studio-backed presence to her music. It sounds like she is working with some very industry-professional types with her production and even her media presence. It isn’t a knock on her at all, but it feels to me as if she’s already got quite the manicured and refined sound despite only debuting in 2021.

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Space Between

Also a love song about the physical distance of Australia from a lover (seems to be a bit of a theme for her, and also fitting for this blog). This one’s lyrics are kind of a big, song-long metaphor about flying and the physical/emotional distance between her in Australia and someone somewhere far away.

It could be kind of a funny schtick to make your whole career about living on a continent-island a few thousand miles from everywhere else. I don’t think she’s going to lean into that as her main sonic identity, but I do like the idea that she’s centering her localization in her music. Australia isn’t the world’s largest market and she could just write pop ballads that speak universally to all English-speaking audiences, but she’s centering her Australian-ness and the physical distance between her and much of the world in these songs, which I think is cool.

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Slow Down

For some reason, this one’s guitar riff sounds SO much like a Bakar song.

Speaking of slightly more general pop tunes - Slow Down is a pretty typical pop bop. It doesn’t have much of either of the Australian localization or the country twang of any of the others. So if you don’t care about any of those, here’s one to show that she can just produce a solid indie-pop song without leaning too heavily into any of those aspects.

Eliza & The Delusionals

Rounding out the four corner of this indie-pop quartet, we have the rock outfit of the group.

Eliza and the Delusionals have actually been around for quite a while compared to the others on here. Their debut single, The Ground, came out in the long-ago times of 2016.

That first track contains a fair amount of what you still hear in the band today, a kind of throwback 90’s garage band style with a classic electric guitar, bass, and physical drum set behind a lead female vocalist. In the years since then, they’ve added more and more sounds to their lineup, including a wider range of guitar sounds, synthesizers, and even some brass in their latest singles.

Despite that sonic growth, the band still pulls on an identifiably 90’s/early 2000’s thread. The cover to their 2022 album Now and Then features VHS tapes, Pokémon cards, and movie posters of the era and the music video for their song Everything You Want even features a high school scene with a ful-on hand-drawn cartoon character band in homage to Lizzie McGuire.

Their upcoming sophomore album Make it Feel Like the Garden will come out July 19 and could serve as an evolution to their sound. There are more horns, new sounds, and the album visuals have this dreamy, glowing, fantastical garden identity, but the title track to the album still has that same rock heavy, anthemic chorus style that they’ve honed over the better portion of a decade.

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Falling For You

This was the song of theirs that first caught my attention on tripple j’s Unearthed. It’s so, SO incredibly catchy. My favorite of all their songs so far.

It starts of with this series of quick, bright, electric guitar strums and we’re off to the races. I’m not sure what else to say except it is an amazingly crafted pop song. And this is also a register that I really enjoy Eliza’s voice in - these kind of airy, breathy verse with her belting out in the chorus. And then there’s even a sax solo with an electric guitar that is halfway verging towards a 1975 territory while staying fully within their 90’s influenced sound.

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Just Exist

This one is the obvious standout when you look at their Spotify streams. With nearly 6 million listens, this was their breakout single. Unfortunately, it gained traction throughout 2019 and just as they were ready for it to propel them to stardom, 2020 hit and those plans were postponed.

If you haven’t heard it before, it is a good starting point for the band, though no longer my personal favorite. It’s a bit of a slow burn in terms of pacing, with a long build up that teases you with musical tension and little release at first. But if you stick around for until the final minute of the song, you get a huge, bombastic chorus that hits particularly hard since you’ve waited the three minutes in anticipation.

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Give You Everything

The lead track to their debut LP Now and Then sets the tone for the rest of the album. The drums and guitar to this one sound straight out of the late 90’s.

It could be MMMbop.

It could be Semi-Charmed Life.

It could be the lead single for a teen romcom as the car drives away from high school after graduation.And that’s intentional.

““The song reminds us of something that would be straight out of an early 00’s teen romance/rom-com movie, so we wanted to really go in with that in the production side of things as well.”

— Eliza

Quote comes from this interview

But at the same time this is one of those funny situations where an homage to a sound manages to recreate what you think that era sounded like, without actually replicating it. They play on the ideas of that era within a modern context, as their 90’s rock sound is improved by the addition of shimmery synths, a few retro-sounding beeps and boops, and just overall incredibly catchy songwriting.

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Somebody

The very latest single release in the lead up to their new album - if this is a true sign of their trajectory on the rest of the album, then their sound is certainly evolving. It’s got some new sounding guitars, a much more complex percussion session, and a lot more saxophone. At the risk of repeating myself, the instrumentation really feels like it’s leaning 1975-y.

I don’t at all think that they are dropping their 90’s saturated sound, but these singles from their new album do seem to signal some interesting sonic growth. I’ll be really interested to listen to this full project soon and see where they are taking this thing.

Looking back on my approach, its a bit of a shame to get really into a bunch of up-and-comers from the other side of the planet. I’ve got a lot of new folks I like and it feels like it’s going to be a long while before I get the chance to see any of them live.

Thank you so very much for reading. I hope you found something you enjoy and please send along anything you think ought to be featured. I’d love to give it a try.

Content Curation #2 - Four genres of Australian indie pop & network effects of the modern internet