Indiecast

After the pandemic threw off touring plans for a few years, many big indie bands are making a 2022 comeback with double albums. Big Thief just delivered their 20-track LP and Kurt Vile recently announced a 90-minute magnum opus . But is Beach House's latest project Once Twice Melody effective as a double album? On this week's Indiecast , Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen talk Beach House's new album (40:...

Is it fair to say 2022 is already a better music year than 2021? After all, 2021 might have been a year without an all-time classic album . But so far, The Weeknd has dropped an Album Of The Year contender with Dawn FM and now, Big Thief has delivered the masterpiece of an album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You . This week on Indiecast , Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen talk new LPs by Big Thi...

The indie world is nothing if not ripe for conversation. This week’s episode of  Indiecast  has Steve and Ian discussing  HitPiece , the new NFT music platform that didn’t get permission from any artist to host their music (4:56), the  release week drama for Black Country, New Road (12:41), and the arrival of a new song from the Red Hot Chili Peppers (17:35). The meat of this w...

We’re barely a month in and 2022 has already delivered a great amount of trends to be hashed out -- like Taylor Swift vs. Damon Albarn (6:36) and Neil Young removing his catalog from Spotify (0:28) -- and music to be excited about. On this week’s episode of  Indiecast , Steve and Ian tackle the latest developments in the indie world and curate their wish lists for albums they hope are finally...

In April of 2011, LCD Soundsystem performed a monumental three-and-a-half hour show at Madison Square Garden that was billed as their final show ever. Fans flew from all over the globe to say dance themselves clean and say goodbye to the dance-punk outfit that made a name for themselves with self-referential lyrics and impressive electronic arrangements. A little less than a year after the band wa...

After the dearth of new music releases over the holidays, 2022 is officially in full swing and it seems like the docket of new music just keeps getting more and more exciting. To kick off a year of new music reviews, Steve and Ian are digging into  Dawn FM , the latest album from The Weeknd that dropped without any preamble on January 7, but is simultaneously the biggest release of the year s...

And just like that, the holiday break is over and it’s already time to get back into reviewing albums and hashing out trends. Steve and Ian are both back from vacation and not wasting any time, diving right into the story of the Eve 6 guy arguing online with Steve Albini about Counting Crows, a topic that sounds like it was created in a lab specifically for  Indiecast . They also chat ab...

2021 is finally winding down, and on the final episode of the year, Steve and Ian are celebrating with the return of Indiecasties, the semi-annual  Indiecast  awards show. Who will take home this year’s Indiecasties, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in indie rock? Tune in to this week’s episode to find out! Included in this installment of the Indiecasties are awards for: “Wh...

It feels like we just celebrated the new year yesterday, but somehow,  2021 is already coming to an end . Steve and Ian already named  their favorite albums of the year , and what better way to further reflect on an eventful year for indie rock with another mailbag episode? This week, Steve and Ian take questions from listeners all over the map about everything from their Mount Rushmore...

It feels like just yesterday that we were looking ahead to what we could expect in 2021, and now we're here in December. Before breaking for the holidays, Steve and Ian wanted to come together to list thier favorite albums of the year. Some albums, like Wild Pink's  A Billion Little Lights  and Low's  Hey What , made both of their lists. For his list, Ian paid tribute to the latest...

In this week’s special Thanksgiving episode, Steve and Ian return to the  Indiecast  Hall Of Fame. In case you don’t recall, the honor was designed to honor albums in the indie rock and alternative rock realm that were influential and beloved at the time of their release, but have since been lost to the test of time and sadly — some might say shamefully — left out of the widely accepted...

It won’t be long now before the year-end lists start rolling out, which means it’s time to look ahead to what we can expect in 2022. This week, Steve and Ian give their takes and predictions for albums coming out next year, including  Mitski ,  Beach House ,  Big Thief , and many more. They each give their confidence ratings between 1 and 10, and discuss the indie rock landscape tha...

This week’s episode of is dedicated to two of the greatest indie rock success stories over the last decade. First up is Idles, whose new album  Crawler  follows up 2020’s  Ultra Mono  and continues down a musical path toward what  Steven Hyden recently called  “the mix of political righteousness and musical bluntness that once caused people to call The Clash ‘the...

After her 2018 debut  Lush  catapulted Lindsey Jordan into the spotlight, she was suddenly working harder — and more regularly — at the age of 18 than most people work in their lives. The tours, interviews, and TV appearances kept coming, and with them a growing cult of personality surrounding Jordan. All of this and more is explored on  Valentine , the new album from Snail Mail. Wh...

The first new album from The War On Drugs in four years has finally arrived. Steve considers The War On Drugs his favorite band of the last decade, while Ian considers them in a similar lane as Tame Impala or Beach house, where the music is enjoyable but does little more for him than establish “vibe.” Musically,  I Don’t Live Here Anymore  is a refinement of the craft the band explored o...

After Ian took the week off to recuperate from his wedding, he’s back online with Steve to do what they do best: talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and hash out trends. This week, the dynamic duo is digging into new albums from Parquet Courts and My Morning Jacket. My Morning Jacket is back with their ninth studio album, following last year’s surprise sequel to  The...

Twenty years helps to put a lot of things in perspective in life, especially music. This week on  Indiecast , Steve and Ian are reflecting on the musical landscape of 2001 and how it has evolved in the two decades since. The discussion revolves around four specific categories: albums they loved in 2001 that they longer care about, albums they didn’t care about in 2001 that are now important t...

This week marked the long-awaited return of Mitski, who has been more or less quiet since the  Be The Cowboy  tour wrapped nearly two years ago. Now, the acclaimed songwriter is back with “Working For The Knife,” bringing with it the always-insane discourse around her music. The meat of this episode revolves around one of the biggest bands of the 21st century, Coldplay. With billions of...

October is upon us, and with it comes new records that are perfectly timed to soundtrack the changing of the leaves. This week, Steve and Ian are digging into  Let Me Have One More , the anticipated new record from  Illuminati Hotties , as well as Strand Of Oaks’  In Heaven . Both artists represent relatively opposite ends of the  Indiecast -core spectrum — Illuminati Hotties h...

Today, September 24th, marks 30 years since Nirvana released  Nevermind . In the last three decades, people have already said pretty much everything there is to say about the Washington grunge outfit, but that isn’t going to stop Steve and Ian from reminiscing about one of the biggest rock albums of all time on this week’s episode of  Indiecast .  Nevermind  is an album that st...

It’s that time again: Steve and Ian are taking questions from listeners. This week’s episode of  Indiecast  kicks off with a recap of last weekend’ Pitchfork Festival, before diving into a discussion of bands that started their career in the indie world before eventually growing to a point that their indie cred became nonexistent. Bands like The Black Keys and Kings Of Leon are shining e...

This week, Steve and Ian are getting ready for festival season. Pitchfork Festival is finally here, featuring sets from Dogleg, Oso Oso, and Bartees Strange and marking the  tripling  of the fest’s notorious “token DIY/emo” acts. This year, festival season arrives in the fall, which leads into a question from a listener asking which albums are indicative of the changing of the leaves for...

What’s your biggest fear as a concertgoer? For Steve, it’s having to do a Number 2 at a show — even nice venues with good toilets seem like a terrible place to spend any significant amount of time. This is perhaps the exact thought that went through the head of the person who had an unfortunate bowel movement in the mosh pit at a Turnstile show last week. Will people now feel empowered to do the s...

During last week’s episode, Steve and Ian wondered if the latest album from Lorde, was going to follow a similar trajectory to recent releases from Clairo and Billie Eilish — LPs with rollouts that feel very muted and underwhelming, but the final product ultimately left them feeling pleasantly surprised.  Solar Power , however, never manages to spin the narrative and truly deliver, offering a...

This week’s episode has Steve and Ian discussing a band that wouldn’t have fallen into the show’s purview on their last record. But the new record from San Francisco black metal heavyweights Deafheaven doesn’t sound very much like black metal at all. Instead,  Infinite Granite  is a genuine departure, a straight-up shoegaze record that starts the band on a completely new path. Where...