TOP INDIE SONGS - WEEK 13

by Jess Grant
3/25/19

Is it me, or is it beginning to feel a lot like festival season around these parts?! Big-name lineups are being announced on Twitter almost every day of the week, meaning it won't be long until we're dusting down our flower crowns and liberally applying the sunblock. Okay, okay, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but there's no denying that the music industry is starting to gear up for a busy few months to come. With 18 days and counting until Arichella, then, why not get yourself ready for festival season this Monday morning with the latest edition of We Are: The Guard's Top Indie Songs, featuring Tame Impala, Two Door Cinema Club, TR/ST, Weyes Blood, flora cash, and more?!

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TAME IMPALA – PATIENCE

Disco ain't dead, and nor are Tame Impala! Four years on from the release of Currents, the Perth band are back this 2019 with “Patience,” five minutes of glittering, ABBA-indebted brilliance that hears an ever-existential Kevin Parker beckoning down the mirror ball on what might be his most pop-oriented cut to date.

 

DENM – LIFE'S TOO SHORT

We Are: The Guard's very own DENM returns just in time for the warmer weather with “Life's Too Short.” The first single to be unveiled from the Huntington Beach artist's forthcoming debut album is already shaping up to be a contender for the song of the summer, with DENM's laid-back garage-pop production combined with his all-around posivibes having recently earned him a place on Spotify's New Music Friday playlist!

 

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB – TALK

Two Door Cinema Club are back, baybay! Three years on from the release of Gameshow, the British trio as fronted by Alex Trimble return this 2019 with “Talk,” an intoxicatingly vibrant piece of “ooh”-filled wonk-pop that comes complete with a suitably bold visual that might be the most literal “lyric video” that I've ever seen.

 

TR/ST – GROUCH

The bangers keep on coming from TR/ST! Following on from the release of “Gone” in February, Robert Alfons is back this month with “Grouch,” a song that hears TR/ST's distinctively reedy vocals presiding over an intensely dramatic blend of drum machines and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”-style synth lines. The Destroyer - 1 is out on April 19th.

 

WEYES BLOOD – MOVIES

Ahead of the release of her fourth album Titanic Rising in April, Weyes Blood returns this month “Movies.” “Why did so many/Get a rise out of me?/I love the movies,” sings Natalie Mering in her spellbindingly operatic mezzo-soprano on the cut, a six-minute ode to the silver screen that opens with spacey synth arpeggios before building to a mesmerizingly symphonic crescendo.

 

JADE BIRD – MY MOTTO

Jade Bird typically trades in big, bluesy, and Janis Joplin-indebted belters (see her previous single “I Get No Joy” for an example). The London artist is showcasing a far softer side to her sound, however, on “My Motto,” a powerful piano ballad about flying in the face of adversity that proves that the 21-year-old knows how to exercise restraint when she really has to.

 

MORMOR – OUTSIDE

Following on from the success of 2018's Heaven's Only Wishful EP, MorMor returns this year with “Outside.” It's a melancholy exhale of a song that hears the Toronto crooner continuing to bridge elements of R&B, indie, and synth-pop, with the track coming paired with a video that sees MorMor exploring childhood trauma through the lens of the Sad Clown trope.

 

FLORA CASH – THEY OWN THIS TOWN

“The woes of the working class” is not a subject matter that readily lends itself to pop music, and yet Stockholm husband-and-wife duo flora cash are tackling the timely topic with “Royals”-esque cool on “They Own This Town.” “I know it's been a hard day on the block/Overtime and the bills don't stop,” begins the moodily grandiloquent piano ballad, an ode to the everyday struggle that comes paired with a symbolic-rich video that was shot between two castles in Sweden.

 

FREEDOM FRY – IS THIS IT (THE STROKES COVER)

Los Angeles folk duo Freedom Fry are no strangers to covering songs, but this might be their most disarmingly lovely offering to date. Despite my initial skepticism, Marie Seyrat and Bruce Driscoll very quickly won me over me with their version of The Strokes classic “Is This It,” with the married couple transforming the indie-rock track into a bittersweet acoustic ballad that's completely and utterly their own.

 

INJURY RESERVE (FEAT. AMINÉ) – JAILBREAK THE TESLA

Injury Reserve aren't playing this 2019! Having returned in February with the unnerving, disorientating “Jawbreaker,” the Tempe trio are back this month with the Aminé-featuring “Jailbreak the Tesla,” an intense banger about “how to hack a Tesla car in under three minutes” that even manages to make lyrical reference to our favorite power couple Grimes and Elon Musk: “Your engine go "Vroom" and my engine go-/Elon on them shrooms/And Grimes' voice gon' be the GPS (Turn left).”

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Until next week, why not follow We Are: The Guard's Best Indie Daily! and Weekly Chart on Spotify for more?! x

Photo by Madison Compton on Unsplash

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Jess Grant is a frustrated writer hailing from London, England. When she isn't tasked with disentangling her thoughts from her brain and putting them on paper, Jess can generally be found listening to The Beatles, or cooking vegetarian food.