Welcome to “Essentials,” a sporadic column for new music recommendations from one lifelong chucklehead with questionable taste. It’s similar to “Fuzzy Meadows” except the title makes more sense and we’ve removed the words “best” and “weekly”.

Post-Trash’s Benji Heywood sits down with composer Qasim Naqvi for a conversation about his new record Endling, and the process behind his otherworldly modular synthesizer compositions.

With their debut EP Love Is a Dog from Hell, forty winks explore alternative rock that splashes across certain characteristics: mathy compositions, shaggy noise production, and solemn vocal deliveries held together with unsure love narratives that still carry immense yearning.

A weekly post highlighting but a few of our favorite new releases in splendid alphabetical order, brief and (hopefully) informative. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are but some of the many we think you should check out.

Pulling from the paisley-ed and darker corners of garage rock, Living Dream delivers an artful 15-minutes of jangly and sinister, vintage-tinged psych rock, where reverb acts as a shadow casting mystery and mire over everything.

Three years out from “Raining Punches,” Moon By Moon feels like a different band. “Dogs” is the Philly-based duo expanded, their sound waxing before our ears, slipping out the door and into the night.

What Fib turned out in Heavy Lifting sounds quite the opposite of what the title suggests. The Philadelphia band’s sophomore release comes across effortless, homespun together like an intricate spiderweb of sounds they were simply designed to emit.

Rat Porridge’s noise is poetry. Today, we’re thrilled to premiere the Cherry Nin-directed video for “nvr stills,” track two off Rat Porridge’s archival mixtape I Love the Earth, which finds Rat Porridge waking in the woods, following the tracks, and finding the rhythm in the noise.

Free Range’s new album Lost & Found crystallizes the confusion and newness that accompanies young adulthood. Post Trash caught up with Sofia Jensen to discuss separate yet intertwined transformations, the gratifying songwriting process, and why Chicago is the best city for indie rock.

Credit’s music is unplanned magic; it’s nebulous and nonconforming. The Baltimore collective’s melodic hardcore roots surfaced on their 2023 debut, but The Last Few Years signals a breakthrough in style, collaboration, and mindset.

A weekly post highlighting but a few of our favorite new releases in splendid alphabetical order, brief and (hopefully) informative. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are but some of the many we think you should check out.

On YEARN IV, Teether and Kuya Neil flex the muscles they’ve diligently trained since their first two mixtapes, GLYPH (2021) and STRESSOR (2023). The pair never lingers too long on a single concept or influence, instead gracefully cruising from thought to thought, genre to genre.

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, where we recap the past week in music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web.

With principal songwriter and singer Francie Medosch now based in Vermont, Florry approaches their new album Sounds Like… with the same easygoing, effortless feel as all great country rockers do. Sounds Like… is loose, heavy on rock licks, fun, and embraces band jams. 

If Blood Monolith’s The Calling of Fire is the soundtrack to Hades, don’t hold out hope for a gentle ride giving you time to prepare for an eternity in Hell. The Calling of Fire is a nasty, nauseatingly nihilistic record. Perhaps scariest of all, the band is only getting warmed up.

Contemplative grief and the sense of place is the heartbeat of Colin Miller’s sophomore album, Losin’. We chatted over Zoom about his creative process, some literature, Gary King, and what it’s like to be able to have close friends to support each other’s musical endeavors. 

Worry Bead Records, an independent label based in Queens, NY, recently released a benefit compilation for the Trans Emergency Project. The compilation features bands like Squirrel Flower, Remember Sports, and 22° Halo, and embodies collaboration that runs towards a collective purpose.

A weekly post highlighting but a few of our favorite new releases in splendid alphabetical order, brief and (hopefully) informative. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are but some of the many we think you should check out.

Cellar Dwellar hails from Columbus, Ohio. Since 2020, the six-piece art-rock project has sharpened their messy strain of punk-psychedelia into a world of its own. Today, we’re thrilled to premiere “digital_drive_by,” Cellar Dwellar’s first release since 2024’s In the Shape of a Swan. 

From all the records that Thanya Iyer has pulled together thus far, TIDE/TIED is her most comforting and brightest to date, where the communal aspect of the music and writing build waves of teeming crescendos and rich textures.

Seattle experimental rock trio Kinski have, for nearly three decades now, specialized in top-of-the-line, grade-A chunkiness, and they may have hit the chunk motherlode on their most recent and 11th overall LP, Stumbledown Terrace.

Philadelphia’s Phil Spector’s Gun are as silly as they are intense, embracing a deadpan irony with record titles like Highway 61 Exploded! and double b side. Today, Post-Trash is thrilled to premiere “Benadryl Dreams,” another double-A b-side from the PSG universe.

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, where we recap the past week in music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web.

A gaggle of Swedish blokes sprinkled with American traditional tattoos—Viagra Boys—reunite to do what they know best. In the midst of a supposed sincerity epidemic, the chronically online nature of Viagr Aboys toes the line between being entirely insincere and unapologetically sincere.

At this point, the only thing we can really expect from Black Country, New Road is to always be surprised. It must have been a challenge to rediscover their identity as a band, but they’ve pulled off their reinvention with grace, beauty, and intention, and created a record bursting with passionate ambition.

While Dogsbody’s combination of high-tension dance grooves and rattling screech proved an excellent simulation of pleasure and terror, it left a lingering question: how would a band with a sound so distinct keep it up? The resounding answer presented by Model/Actriz’s follow-up Pirouette, confidently and beautifully.

A weekly post highlighting but a few of our favorite new releases in splendid alphabetical order, brief and (hopefully) informative. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are but some of the many we think you should check out.

On Reservoir of Love, what’s obscured is what’s clear. As Shannon Wright reaches inward, she unveils universal external truths. Reservoir of Love is an invigorating, beautifully intrinsic listening experience for anyone accepting change or seeking solace.

Talulah Paisley’s music is as familiar as it is alien and “Slink” is remarkably distinct. Featured back-up vocalists Katie Von Schleicher and Frankie Cosmos’ Greta Kline and Alex Bailey support Paisley’s brilliantly loosey-goosey vocal delivery, making “Slink” an excellent second helping from the upcoming LP.

Pere Ubu were an unsettling and necessary anti-puritan presence in American post-punk since the 1970s. Led by the inimitable David Thomas, the Cleveland band existed in the margins of the movement, writing dark, frantic, and remarkable songs that would go on to influence countless bands and genres.