duendita is hard to classify, a project based in the Great American Songbook that smears itself into contemporary textures and abstractions. Behind the curtain is Queens’s own Candace Camacho, whose discography has progressed in fits and starts but is gathering momentum with two albums in the last year, plus a delightful new single (“piel“). My Editor’s Pick off a strong will to survive is “cutie,” in which Camacho‘s vocals dive, soar, recede, reverberate and multiply over a sparse and soulful arrangement before giving way to something like a heartbeat.
Bleed right through to see your face
A whole life full of pain
Bat my eyes, a pair of dice
Pushing me away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away, away…
Ooo yellow was my heartbeat
Ooo an oven deep inside me
Oh oh all my words are running, running, running, running…
Unknown Mortal Orchestra have been hiding in plain sight for the past 15 years, a very “me” band that I didn’t properly investigate. Maybe I confused them with other three word Orchestra bands? Like Yellow Magic or Electric Light? No silly, not those. My point is that Ruban Nielson and pals do New Zealand proud with a 90s-influenced take on guitar indie that also belies some Marc Bolan familiarity. Their new CURSE EP is banger-heavy and particularly memorable when its Norse God riffs and power chords slam you against the nearest Pōhutukawa tree on “Boys with the Characteristics of Wolves.”
Well my face went out of fashion
Like a lamb skin cowl on the floor
Are your talons long and colorful
The blood inside me wants to get out
Yeah God save your soul
The temperature rises you’re losing control
There’s no way home
Boys with the characteristics of wolves
Colombian-Floridian Nick León made a splash a few years back with the big, no-nonsense club/party thumper Xtasis, but he has rebranded for his new A Tropical Entropy album, embracing a range of genres and textures from balearic to para-indie, cleverly bringing in Erika de Casier, one of the luminaries of the Denmark Ladies’ Indie Scene, for the fizzy micro-delights of “Bikini.” There’s also a yummy all-Florida super-collaboration with Miami club genius Jonny From Space called “Metromover.” But slowgraffitti staff and readers alike are finding their highest heaven in the shuffle of “Ghost Orchid,” featuring 2025 underground it person (and Colombian) Ela Minus.
Crees que porque me puedes ver
Me puedes tener
No sé qué te hace creer que
Estoy a tu merced
Búscame, búscame
Que cuando crees que me ves
Tu vida no va a ser
La misma que antes de
OK so listen up, slowgraffitti isn’t here to take its turn at slobbering all over the latest radio friendly unit shifter; Colombian (again!) superstar KAROL G is a lot more than her spectacular and joyously flogged t&a. She’s riding the commercial tsunami of reggaeton, but her new Tropicoqueta album explores an array of moods, textures and Latin American idioms with a surprising taste for authenticity, applying mucho sexo and the kind of playful light touch that ravages the pop charts and brings out my inner Shakira. Shake it shake it shake it!
You guys know how much I love to folk — in fact, do you wanna folk with me? — but I’ve been a bit of a Shirley Collins denialist — “she ain’t no Sandy Denny” you’d hear me mutter into my warm lager down the Hare & Kettle. But the old lass has chucked out a dead good one from 1969 with her older sister Dolly called “Ca’ the Yowes” and I don’t know what that means but it’s a song about love and devotion and marriage that sounds awfully ripe for folk song tragedy, and its stark and churchy organ hath lain claim to my soul.
Ye sall get gowns and ribbons meet
Cauf-leather shoen upon your feet
And in my arms ye’se lie and sleep
An’ ye sall be my dearie
If you’ll but stand to what you’ve said
I’ll come with you, my bonny lad
And you may roll me in your plaid
And I shall be your dearie
You shall get gowns and ribbons meet
And leather shoen upon your feet
And in my arms you’ll lie and sleep
My bonny dearie
Interesting how the stars of a specific decade tend to implode or even die as a new decade dawns. Ariel Pink and John Maus were two of the leading lights of 2010s indie, bringing me buttloads of fond memories and literal tears of joy. Then on January 6, 2021 they famously showed up at the US Capitol attack. Pink turned out to be in a deep state of Trump cult derangement, even showing up on Tucker Carlson to whine about getting cancelled. I hate cancel culture as much as the next guy but I haven’t been able to listen to him since. Maus on the other hand has been arty and cryptic about the whole kit and kaboodle; he’s got new work coming out and I have to say I kinda love it. Could “I Hate Antichrist” be about Trump? An ironic reaction to people demanding that Maus toe the line? The video suggests it’s more about people that wield power in a variety of realms, and maybe about the hatred directed at Maus himself (“I hate son of a bitch”). It’s as powerful as anything he’s ever put out, and “Because We Built It” is equally excellent. He’s the Leni Riefenstahl of our times.
Mysterious Houston native indie-soul-popper DERBY‘s new album Slugger is a joy-giving thing, hitting those autotune emotions with precision and heart in a similar vein to my secret husband and boo Organ Tapes. The fork published a maddening review calling him derivative of three artists they seemingly pulled out of a hat, but whatever, fuck them, this is tangy and melodic and “Two Step” in particular just bangs.
Hands up, I want to see you take what you can get
In the Texas heat and glory sky
Spotlight, light this
And when the two step
Spins you around, you run, honey
Run, honey, run
Run, honey, run
You know it’s true but you swallow it down
Run, honey, run
Run, honey, run
The slowgraffitti readership is still reeling — processing and debating the unexpected 2024 album of the year laurels being awarded to Seefeel. Who else, one might ask, could perhaps be working to sculpt color and smoky form across cavernous spaces with such mastery? Mark Van Hoen, a former member/collaborator of the Feel, raises his hand with his The Eternal Present album. His corroded choruses scrape against ghostly siren calls in this collection of brutal and beautiful holograms. He covers “Shine” by Slowdive, improving on the original, but maximum dopamine is generated by the key-straddling quivers of “Multiplex.”
The summer hasn’t felt quite right without the bratty boy energy of a new Gee Tee record, but lo — another three-piece three-chord band serving violent infantile pleasure has bobbed up from down under: Media Puzzle are fast, thrashy, tinny, and have an endless supply of wiry, world-ruling tunes in the baskets of their tricycles.
Me and Simo Cell had a little thing back in ’23, and now he’s come around to serenade me again with his minimalist French dance abstractions. Our time apart has made him perhaps a little flintier and more emphatic, doing away with melody almost entirely. On his new FL Louis EP he builds “Circuits” around growled and processed vowels, percussion, and an occasional police siren, just for kicks. On “Paris Funk Express” he strips funk down to its skeleton yet keeps the dancefloor on fire. Trés cool.
London’s Patrick Wolf achieved a soupçon of indie acclaim back in the aughts, but fell off the Earth for a decade or so, struggling with addiction and personal tragedy. He’s back now with the grand and impressive Crying the Neck, serving up anthemic, widescreen Statements about England (“rotten to the core” apparently), and one can’t help getting swept up in all the delirious drama. He sure gays it up in “The Last of England” video.
But I was cruising, Gawain in the mist
There as we kissed
Up against the Pendle Hill oak
The green king
Deep in doggerland woke
I got born into this sadness
Just like you
Cried the white horse of the sun
To the inverted moon
And there we were, the last of England
Rotten to the core
When came a fireblight, Hallelujah
Ripped us shore to shore
Before I go can we briefly discuss what is arguably the pop song of the summer, the streaking dopamine rush of “L.O.V.E.” by Jessica Winter? Jessica used to be punk apparently, back in Portsmouth, England, and her new My First Album spans a genre or two, but most importantly she knows how to take you to that sweet and weightless place in the sky and spin you right round.
I can’t seem to shake it
Wherever I go
It’s all for the taking
It’s all that I know
All I want
All I want
All I want is to feel it
It’s not complicated
So close I can taste it
We could be amazing
Or not at all
All I want is to feel it
L-O-V-E
What it does to me…