TOP INDIE SONGS - WEEK 26

Summer has finally arrived, but we all know that we can't get the party started without music! Lucky for you guys, the team and I have been busy as ever working our way through the blogosphere in search of all of the freshest indie tunes to see you into vacation season in sizzling style! Crank up the AC and slather on the sunscreen, then, as something tells me that it's about to get pretty damn hot in here as we hit play on the latest edition of We Are: The Guard's Top Indie Songs, featuring Metronomy, Hot Chip, Foster the People, Chelsea Wolfe, YACHT, and lots more!

-

METRONOMY – SALTED CARAMEL ICE CREAM

Did somebody say...ICE CREAM?! London's Metronomy are serving up some seriously delicious sounds on their latest single and the follow-up to “Lately,” “Salted Caramel Ice Cream” – a catchy, addictive, playful piece of bleepy-bloopy synth-pop that hears the band singing in the refrain: “She's like a dream/Salted caramel ice cream.”

CAROLINE POLACHEK – DOOR

It's Caroline Polachek's world and we're all living in it on “Door!” “I feel totally out of control of most things in the world, but I can at least build landscapes for the mind,” says the former Chairlift frontwoman of her debut solo single – an airy, sprawlingly surreal pop masterpiece that comes accompanied by an equally abstract video that sees Caroline moving through a series of portals and mirrors.

HOT CHIP – SPELL

The dance sorcery doesn't stop on “Spell,” the latest single to be unveiled from Hot Chip's recent album A Bath of Full Ecstasy. Clocking in at just over six minutes, it's a glittering indie-dance opus that hears Hot Chip harking back to the gloriously hooky days of “Ready for the Floor,” with the late, great Philippe Zdar stealing the show with his French-house production.

FOSTER THE PEOPLE – IMAGINATION

Albert Einstein once said that “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination,” and it'd appear that Los Angeles indie-pop band Foster the People are in full agreement on their latest track “Imagination.” “I see us dancing by ourselves/We do it better with no one around, yeah/Just you in my imagination, yeah/In my imagination, oh,” sings frontman Mark Foster on the sultry, balmy piece of neo-psychedelia, which is giving me some seeerious Tame Impala circa Currents vibes!

DOG ORCHESTRA – PITY PARTY

Dog Orchestra are throwing a pity party for one in the video for their blaring, pulsating synth-pop track of the same name. Anyone who's ever spent a Saturday night at home alone and drowning their sorrows in too much pizza and alcohol is sure to see themselves in this clip, which really captures that hedonistic-yet-melancholic vibe that Dog Orchestra do so well.

CHELSEA WOLFE – THE MOTHER ROAD

Chelsea Wolfe is back! Chelsea Wolfe is baaack! Following on from the release of Hiss Spun two years ago, the goth-pop artist returns this 2019 with “The Mother Road” – a sinister, ominous sweep of a song that hears Chelsea's incantatory vocals coming set against a backdrop of unnerving, Suspiria-style strings.

BLOSSOMS – YOUR GIRLFRIEND

Having played a massive homecoming show at Stockport's Edgeley Park over the weekend, Blossoms return today with “Your Girlfriend.” It's a ridiculously, immediately catchy track that Tom Odgen reveals was inspired by the music of Talking Heads, with melodic guitars and groovy basslines backing the frontman as he sings about that awkward moment when you fall in love with your best friend's girlfriend. P.S. I LOVE THIS VIDEO!

YACHT – (DOWNTOWN) DANCING

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell! Thankfully, YACHT are here to save me with their funky fresh new single "(Downtown) Dancing” – a cowbell-laden disco groover that the Los Angeles band reveal was written with help from AI technology. “We wanted to find a way to interrogate technology more deeply,” write YACHT. “Now that we're making music again, it feels more human than human, more YACHT than YACHT.”

HOBO JOHNSON – TYPICAL STORY

Hobo Johnson is for the weirdos. The outsiders. The ones who didn't get invited to the popular girl's pool party in high school. The Sacramento artist, who made his breakthrough last year with “Peach Scone,” returns today with another ode to the misfits, “Typical Story” – a raucous slacker-rock anthem that hears Hobo on top form poetically: “It's the story of the kid/Who clearly won't know what to say/When the love of his life starts/To calmly walk away.”

SURF CURSE – DISCO

If there was a playlist called “Songs to Dance Alone in Your Bedroom To,” “Disco” by Surf Curse would most definitely be close to the top of it. Seriously! I'm not even ashamed to admit that I spent a good half hour jumping up and down on my mattress and singing along with my hairbrush to this track – a wildly infectious jangle-pop gem that kind of sounds like a parallel-universe “A-Punk.” Heaven Surrounds You is out 9/13.

-

Don't forget to follow We Are: The Guard's Weekly Chart on Spotify for even more summer-ready tunes! x

Photo by Patrick Buck on Unsplash

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.