TOP INDIE BANDS - WEEK 32 2014

If you're a Lollapalooza Loser like me, aka you couldn't afford to go to the festival so spent the entire weekend sitting in your dirty underwear watching the live stream and are now left with nothing but a dead ass and three days of your life you're never going to get back, then I'm here for you, bro. So take a cold shower, have a nice stretch, and most importantly, change your fucking pants, as it's time to snap back to reality (oh, there goes gravity) with the help of some top indie bands. Girl power is the overriding theme of this week's column, and not one of the several women featured go by the name of Jessie J, Ariana Grande or Nicki Minaj. Fuck yes! Btw, you know a festival is in a bad place when one of the most talked about things of the whole event is the security brutality. Get it together, Lolla.

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KAREN O – RAPT

BANKS – BEGGIN FOR THREAD

I fucking love Banks so hard, I can't even. “Beggin for Thread” is the first song the Los Angeles chanteuse has released that you can actually dance to, but why dance when you can give the stink eye?! Banks is the fucking master of the stink eye. She's dishing it out to all of the basic bitches she's going to destroy in September when she finally unveils her debut album, Goddess. Speaking of basic bitches.

LANA DEL REY – ULTRAVIOLENCE

FKA TWIGS – PENDULUM

So here's where I'm supposed to lose my fucking shit over “Pendulum.” Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not a professional ass licker like SOME people (Pitchfork). That said, I love this YouTube comment from Sherelle Charles: “she could put out a track fartin and burpin over a beat for 5 minutes and i'd still have that shit on repeat cuz I know she'd do something creative with it.”

ÁSGEIR – STOLEN DANCE (MILKY CHANCE COVER)

Ásgeir is the King of Covers, so it makes sense that Triple J recently invited the angelic-voiced Icelandic along to their studios to perform “Stolen Dance” by Milky Chance for their famous Like A Version feature. This isn't as good as his cover of “Heart-Shaped Box,” but it's a lot better than his cover of “Wrecking Ball.” Outside of the Ásgeir hierarchy, however, and it's still probably one of the best covers of the year so far. Check out his band too. Beard envy, much?!

J MASCIS (FEAT. CAT POWER) – WIDE AWAKE

Hmm, I'm not sure what I think about these J Mascis solo records. Frontman leaves his band to release an acoustic album is one of rock music's ultimate clichés. This song is incredibly pretty, though. That's because my bae, Chan Marshall aka Cat Power, is giving it the pretty. If you can call the unofficial “Face of Meth” pretty.

HOW TO DRESS WELL – LET U KNOW

As if “What is this Heart?” wasn't enough How to Dress Well for one year, Tom Krell has released a bonus song to accompany the album entitled “Let U Know.” According to Krell, he “needed this song to be heard by people” even though he “couldn't find a place for it on the album.” That's because even with shit loads of auto-tune, he still sounds thoroughly average. Dude should consider renaming himself How to Dress Well and Sing Bad, lol.

KATE BOY – SELF CONTROL

So I completely forgot about Kate Boy. Come on, admit it, you did too. The Stockholm trio pretty much disappeared after releasing the infallible “Northern Lights,” “In Your Eyes” and “The Way We Are” last year. It turns out the band were busy recording their debut album, the lead single of which, “Self Control,” you can listen to above. The banging slice of electro-pop continues where their previous singles left off, with Kate Akhurt's epic vocals soaring atop the groovy ass beat. Bring on the album, oh, and the Kate Boy line of baseball caps.

SOPHIE – LEMONADE

Diplo didn't name SOPHIE as one of his favorite producers during his recent Reddit AMA for no reason. The enigmatic London artist is responsible for some of the most fun and infectious shit on the entire blogosphere atm, as “Bipp” and “Elle” have already proved. Dude does it once again on his latest single, “Lemonade,” arguably his most bubblegum effort to date. Don't even try to fight it, embrace the sugar high. If it's good enough for Diplo, then it's good enough for me, and you, and basically anyone ever.

ALT- J – HUNGER OF THE PINE (CLIPPING REMIX)

clipping. have transformed “Hunger of the Pine” into a post-Yeezus hip-hop banger, nuking that Miley Cyrus sample to fucking space in the process. Daveed Diggs sounds fiercer than ever over that truncated brass, reducing alt-J frontman, Joe Newman, to nothing more than a wet and unwelcome fart lingering permanently in the distance. Brb, going to replay this shit for the rest of my fucking life.

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Homerpalooza > Lollapalooza.

About Jess Grant

When Jess Grant isn't writing on music, she can be found playing it – on her guitar, on her ukulele, and on her recently acquired mandolin. Playing it hideously, she ought to add. Jess also studies. She studies the English language, to be precise. Jess is currently on her way to a degree in the subject, and enjoys starting and never finishing novels, screenplays, and poetry in her spare time. She also likes dogs. Lots of dogs.