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def a special case since this is the band I used to manage, but this album was part of a huge turning point in my life. the band is a few friends I went to college with and ended up moving in with my junior year. I knew them from their early days playing shows around NYC and slowly adding new songs to the set list, and by the time we lived together they had the whole album written. I was basically the Frankie Jonas to their Jonas Brothers until they decided they wanted to finally put their years of work out into the world and asked me to be their manager. working with them was my first experience in that kind of role and led to me pursuing it as a career, which Iām currently in grad school for.
genuinely love this album musically tho, itās rough around the edges as it was produced before and during the pandemic and was a mishmash of studio recording and DIY stuff we threw together in our living room, but I think it adds to the charm. if youāre into indie rock with emo lyrics and noisy shoegazy type guitars def give it a listen. the songwriting is super personal to the vocalist and knowing her life outside of the album and what went into the songs makes it that much more meaningful.
every time I listen to this album it takes me back to having just graduated, not knowing what I was doing with my life, but knowing that I got so much fulfillment out of putting music into the world and unknowingly stumbling into figuring out what I did want to do with my life. wouldnāt be where I am now had I not been a part of making this album happen
Apr 11, 2024
Related Recs
Iāve been into this band since 2017 & they inspired me so much back when I was in college. I was also listening to them right around when I was both getting into the concept of āmathyā music and going to my local shows in NJ for the first time.
One of my most memorable shows was driving one of my newer friends to see Peaer on an autumn, Sunday night in a church recreational space, 40 minutes away on a super rainy night. The venueās parking lot was gravel and next to the churchās graveyard and there was probably 20-25 people total, including the bands.
And it was so worth it, hearing Peaer live finally and seeing their musicianship in person. I have a real love for bands that are trios of drums, bass, guitar & vox, how you can hear everyone individually, but also how just 3 people can create such a wall of sound together. It was so important for me to see them live at that age, and Iām so glad I pushed myself to make the drive down there.
They havenāt come out with music since 2019, an album called A Healthy Earth which I had on repeat religiously. So to have a new single from them with that same guitar tone, funky time changes but new formulas and ideas has been incredibly lovely.
Iām thankful theyāre still around and continuing to create š
Jan 7, 2025
I woke up one morning in September to my boyfriend getting a call from the founders of Rough Trade Records (who are responsible for some of my all time favorite artist debuts including The Sundays and The Strokes). They were responding to a cold email he sent the day prior, a total shot in the dark. Long story short, he paced around my apartment on the call with London all morning while I got ready for class and 9 months later his band just released their debut single with Rough Trade! Iām recommending because of the serendipity of it all, because itās such a perfect little once-in-a-lifetime-chance stars-aligning real crowd-pleaser of a story, because a lot of good things have come into our lives since we started dating (I think thatās a good sign), and because itās a genuinely good song I think everyone should listen to!!
May 30, 2025
from the minds of the chicago wunderkinds who went on to form deerest friends, sharp pins, lifeguard, post office winter, and other hallogallo/related-teen-indie-rock-brilliance came this delightful project
wonderfully meshes together eras of indie rock/pop to create something so unique and magical, havenāt stopped thinking about it for a while
this is one of those records that gets people to get their friends together to start their own band
Sep 18, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
Jun 2, 2025
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that arenāt an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to ā which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since youāre listening to something really just because itās the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take whatās served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, itās meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework thatās still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether itās available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so iām forced to consider its value (usually iāll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as iāll buy a few releases iāve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they donāt get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until iām done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isnāt coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, Iām getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether itās bandcamp daily, yāall lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because itās kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences itās like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because thereās no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now iām listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing iāll say ā because in yappin about this iām realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of āvibesā and āaestheticsā and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship iām forming with what iāve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didnāt have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. thatās ok! maybe I rank it lower but now iāve actually taken time to consider it, itās in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often iāll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
Jun 4, 2025