IDLES' 'Ultra Mono' Is Punk Rock for the Twitter Age — for Better or Worse

Published Sep 22, 2020

Like it or not, IDLES may be the face of punk rock in 2020. The sneering British band has exploded in popularity since releasing two critica...

Dikembe Remind Emo Fans That It's Okay to Be Sad on 'Muck'

Published Aug 28, 2020

Mr. Hooper was one of the most beloved characters on Sesame Street. Cranky and curmudgeonly but with a heart of gold, he was beautifully por...

Thanya Iyer Explores a World of Sounds with Dazzling Clarity on 'KIND'

Published Jul 30, 2020

How can we do better? It's a question that's often asked, but not often enough. Humans don't tend to like it when a question lingers for too...

Love '90s Guitar Music? Then You'll Dig Kestrels' 'Dream or Don't Dream'

Published Jul 07, 2020

In the last few years, the '90s alt-rock revival has been able to flourish not only because several era-defining acts returned two decades l...

Touching's 'Isolation Blues' Sounds Like a Greatest Hits of Pandemic Moods

Published Jul 03, 2020

In a review of the 2015 album Some Kind of Family, Exclaim! called Winnipeg group Les Jupes "Canada's next great band." A week later, they b...

Niagara's Heavy Hearts Add to the Canon of Breakup Albums 'Room with a View'

Published Jun 24, 2020

Every person is different, and so every relationship is different, and so every breakup is different. So, the ever-popular breakup album com...

Bad Moves' 'Untenable' Makes Today's Fraught Climate Sound Like a Party

Published Jun 24, 2020

"We're still having a good time," Bad Moves emphasize in "End of Time," the final song on their second album Untenable. The band had a stron...

Covet's 'Technicolor' Asserts Yvette Young as the Guitar Virtuoso of the Underground

Published Jun 04, 2020

In recent years, Yvette Young has emerged as the guitar prodigy of the underground, giving stunning displays of technical proficiency, rhyth...

Laurence Hélie Reemerges as Mirabelle on Enchanting 'Late Bloomer'

Published May 27, 2020

Laurence Hélie vanished almost as quickly as she appeared. The Montreal singer-songwriter released her debut album in 2010 and won the Félix...

Jeff Rosenstock's 'NO DREAM' Is Authentic Punk Rock for the Masses

Published May 25, 2020

Well, he did it again. For the second time in a row, Jeff Rosenstock dropped an album without warning (the last one being POST-, which arriv...

Retirement Party Pack a Hefty Punch on 'Runaway Dog'

Published May 15, 2020

When a dog runs away, it usually comes back. But sometimes it doesn't, and the possibility of that outcome can be paralyzing. Uncertainty ex...

I'm Glad It's You's 'Every Sun, Every Moon' Is an Emo Triumph Born Out of Tragedy

Published May 14, 2020

When the curtain rises on I'm Glad It's You's Every Sun, Every Moon to the "Hallelujah"-esque piano arpeggios of "Desert Days," you may get...

Diet Cig's 'Do You Wonder About Me?' Turns Self-Doubt into a Celebration

Published Apr 29, 2020

Early on, Diet Cig were tasked with living up to expectations. In 2015, excitable fans in indie and punk circles quickly took to the bubbly...

The Treble's 'Rivals' is Canada's Unwanted Answer to Imagine Dragons

Published Apr 22, 2020

If you saw Billboard's chart of the top 50 rock songs of the 2010s, you may have felt a sense of cognitive dissonance regarding "rock music"...

Emily Rockarts' 'Little Flower' Glows from the Inside Out

Published Apr 22, 2020

From the first few notes of Emily Rockarts' Little Flower, it's a debut worth hearing. The beautiful organs and synths of "Get It All Back"...

Good Looking Friends' 'The Light of the Well' Is Subtly Extraordinary Emo

Published Apr 15, 2020

What an excellently crafted and simply lovely record from this under-the-radar Brooklyn group. At first, Good Looking Friends' second album...

Stay Inside Viewing

Published Apr 09, 2020

First things first, let's just agree to quickly acknowledge and move past the fact that this band releasing their debut album during the COV...

Eerie Gaits Holopaw

Published Apr 09, 2020

Wild Pink's Yolk in the Fur was one of the more underappreciated gems of 2018, with a luscious, highly textural sound at the nexus of shoega...

Violent Soho Everything Is A-OK

Published Apr 02, 2020

There's bound to be lots of music made before, but released during the COVID-19 pandemic, which will lead some of it to feel eerily prescien...

Charmer Ivy

Published Apr 01, 2020

Newly emerging from northern Michigan, Charmer sound exactly like an emo band from the Midwest. The easiest comparison here is Tigers Jaw, n...