Local Artists:

Alex L’Estrange: Reconsider (Single) (Indie)
- Alex L’Estrange is one of those really complete musical all-rounders, and as such, warrants your urgent attention. His productions are shiny and immediate, and Reconsider is no different in this respect, but there’s a very particular kind of lyrical self-analysis on this track that feels uncharted for this young boi. Here, his words strike this nice balance between being oddly direct, and even more oddly indirect. It’s like turning corner after corner, only to keep finding: more corners. (Joe Saxby)

Cheap Fakes: Baby, It's A Good Song (Single) (Indie)
- Ahead of their third album, slinky, tight ska pop from the versatile Brisbane band. (Chris Cobcroft)

CVIRO & GXNXVS: Sober (Single) (Indie)
- Gold Coast producer CVIRO & GXNXVS release their second collaborative single, which is more high-quality r'n'b and neo-soul of a kind that doesn't often get made in Australia. Work of this calibre puts them in the same category as artists like The Weeknd or Miguel, can't wait to hear more. (Chris Cobcroft)

Gill Bates: Didn't Mind (Prod. Feki) (Single) (Indie / Mucho Bravado)
- Really slick club fare from the rapper and r'n'b crooner. Bates is one of those unusual types who is pretty damn good at both, especially the rapping. There's been a surprising amount of head-turning dance-rap coming out of Brisbane and this stands tall amongst that crowd. (Chris Cobcroft)

Golden Age Of Ballooning: We Will Never Let You Go (Indie)
- Big slabs of heartland, country and roots rock with curly, psychedelic fringes. It's a big band with a lot of sound and they've moulded it with care into a rather fine EP. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ultra Material: EP (Indie)
- Another band to add to Brisbane's swiftly growing shoegaze revival. Ultra Material bring a bouncy synth-pop that's not often heard in the company of shoegaze and dream-pop, but with Donovan Miller's weirdly effective production, every element tries to yell over every other in a cacophony that moves at an almost breakneck pace and is surprisingly excellent to behold. (Chris Cobcroft)

Australian Artists:

Broadway Sounds: Sing It Again (Tim Shiel Dub) (Single) (Indie)
- Electronic wizard and globally certified nice person Tim Shiel strikes again with this sultry rework of the latest Broadway Sounds single. He filters the original through a dusty dub lens, and sends you careering through the haze like some useless, discarded mannequin, until you settle into a consistent spiral that might come to an end one day, but probably not. Choice. (Joe Saxby)

Cassidy: Bore (Happy Endin’)
- Cassidy carved out this excellent cassette in relative isolation from a boat shed on Dangar Island, just north of Sydney. Nautical elements there are not, but you can clearly feel this brutal loneliness hanging low and solemn over everything like a sodden blanket on a decrepit clothesline. It’s a dark, intriguing inner excursion that would do well in any diligent club. (Joe Saxby)

Chesta Hedron: Hash Monster(Single)(Indie)
- It's Dick Dale done stoner style. All the tuneful dexterity of surf given warm, smeary, fuzzy, weed fuelled life! This Byron Bay duo is, like most duos, overcompensatingly loud and I love it. (Chris Cobcroft)

Chris Russel's Chicken Walk:Swimsuit (Single) (Love and Theft)
- Sometimes the meeting between blues rock and stoner is just like a big whiff of amyl. The deep, rich guitar and Chris' low-slung voice, it's almost as if time itself slows down to make the moment last that much more pleasurably long. (Chris Cobcroft)

Circular Keys: Sorry! (Bedroom Suck)
- I hadn’t really heard anything from these guys since 2013 - the glory days - when they blew me away as the opener for Blank Realm and Mark McGuire at that year’s Open Frame festival. But I guess here’s their debut record, and whaddaya know. It’s immensely enjoyable. It fkn breezes by (in under thirty minutes), but you actually get to visit every possible crevice of Circular Keys’ rusticated sonic realm. Lo-fi, glitched-out atmospheres shrouded by just the right amount of crushing darkness. (Joe Saxby)

Cosmo’s Midnight: Walk With Me (ft. Kucka) (Single)
- So good. How could anyone manufacture groove as tight as this? I certainly don’t know. Electronic pop doesn’t get much doper than this, and Kucka’s pipes are nothing short of scintillating. (Joe Saxby)

Flyying Colours: Running Late (Single) (Island / Universal)
- Flyying Colours have been up to some antics lately, buggering off overseas and releasing a new EP, then signing to Island for its Australian release. You might expect some changes in their sound too, and there are: this single sounds like some lost anthem by The Church with the barest echoes of dreampop and shoegaze. Actually, it sounds pretty great, I'm definitely OK with this. (Chris Cobcroft) 

Juxtpose: Tropicale (Indie)
- Frankly, I could bounce to this any day. Juxtpose opts for drilly, sci-fi-minded textures and beats in his dogged search for dancefloor action. Rancid. (Joe Saxby)

Lowtide: Julia/Spring 7"(Lost & Lonesome)
- Two more medicated cuts from the Melbourne shoegazers, who are very much on the soothingly Galaxie 500 end of the shoegaze-dreampop spectrum. Right now this is doing a whole lot more for me than a campari and two panadeine-forte ever could. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ross de Chene Hurricanes: In A Rut (Single) (Indie)
- Enthusiastically bratty garage-rock. It's funny how boring garage got when it was everywhere, but now all the copycats have left to ruin the next fad, the folks who've stuck around to do garage justice with shambolic messiness, monolithically loud production and crappy 'tude are just what I want to hear. (Chris Cobcroft) 

Thandi Phoenix: Come Around (Single) (Motto Beats / Universal)
- Lush, soulful r'n'b from the Sydney crooner. The orchestration is impressive, giving Come Around a fire that is completely missing from the quietly effete crooning of much r'n'b. As fine a songwriter as she is a singer which establishes the prospect of pretty fine work to come. (Chris Cobcroft)

Overseas Artists:

Ancient River: Keeper Of The Dawn (Ancient River / Music Excavation / Summer Moon)
- Florida's James Barreto makes really spacey psych rock. With the vocals melting into the background you can easily hear his big influences - David Axelrod & Dario Argento - imparting subversively funky unease to the cosmic journey. (Chris Cobcroft)

Destroyer: Girl In A Sling (Single) (Merge / Inertia)
- Dan Bejar sounds a bit like Cohen singing Sondheim on this second single for the upcoming Poison Season. Deftly orchestrated with strings and piano Girl In A Sling is as poignantly moving as one expects from Destroyer. (Chris Cobcroft)

Ducktails: St. Catherine (Domino / EMI)
- Make yourself a brew and sit down on your favourite chair to the new Ducktails album, because baby, all it wants to do is make you feel NICE. Right from track one, the cushy, carefree vibes smother and caress you with an authenticity that only the chillest homies can provide. HOT TIP: Headbang in the mirror to Headbanging In The Mirror. (Joe Saxby)

Homeshake: Give It To Me (Single) (Strange Yonder)
- Homeshake is bless. I’m a large fan of In The Shower (his last record), but this single-songle, and the one that turned up on that Furious Hoops compilation, indicates a stark change in direction that focuses in on dubby electronic beats, fairly hemp-flavoured vocal manipulations, and even more looseness in the groove. Very, very prepared for the LP coming up. (Joe Saxby)

Greyhat: Glider (Single) (Foreign Family Collective / Inertia)
- If Arca were a happier dude, he might make music like this Portland dude on Odesza's label / collective thing. Slow swathes of synth get hit with a cannonade of glitch. It starts out sounding like oldschool idm / glitchcore but if you listen there's a warmly wonky instrumental hip hop feel in there too. The warmly grinding bass is also ... just the nicest. (Chris Cobcroft)

Introverted Dancefloor: Happiness Is Such A Mess (Single) (Carpark)
- Introverted Dancefloor's Bevan Smith has a connection to fellow Kiwis The Ruby Suns, one which is immediately obvious when you hear his warm but soft edm-pop. If you're not familiar then perhaps Hot Chip would be an easier comparison. In any case, ID is at least as gently winning as either of those outfits. (Chris Cobcroft)

Mac Demarco: I've Been Waiting For Her (Single) (Captured Tracks / Spunk)
- Making dad-rock cool for everyone, it's another effortlessly listenable jangle-pop single that weaves that black magic which makes what should be naff beyond belief hip as heckfire. (Chris Cobcroft)

Mike Cooper: Fratello Mare (Room40)
- A super strong new LP from the “post-everything musician”. Not much is known about Mike Cooper, except maybe for the fact that he’s one of those prodigious experimentalists whom you don’t actually need to know much about to really appreciate. (Joe Saxby)

Protomatryr: Why Does It Shake? (Single) (Hardly Art / Urinal Cake, X! / etc / Inertia)
- Another hard, lean cut from the Detroit post-punks that knows just the right moments to lunge from tense, uncomfortable questioning into outright savagery, pulling back again before surging into the glorying rage of their sound. This is Protomartyr at their best. (Chris Cobcroft)

The Star Department: The Pea Green Boat (Hidden Shoal)
- A dense, highly enjoyable experimental pop record by the Irish band, out through Perth’s Hidden Shoal. Spin this to round out the cold weather and reminisce about how good it was. Highlight: Superhawk - an aesthetically brilliant pop ballad with Steve Reich-ish compositional flourishes. (Joe Saxby)