When Alex Leniz moved from Tampa Bay to Philadelphia, he wasn’t chasing a scene. He was starting over. Common Crime came out of that reset, a band built around punk roots, melodic instincts, and a need to make songs that feel like they mean something. Since releasing their debut EP Signals & Signs in 2024, they’ve become one of the most promising names in Philly’s underground, doing it without hype or gimmicks. Just songs, sweat, and a clear sense of who they are.

Nobody talks about Blonder Tongue Audio Baton like it mattered. Not really. Not in the way it actually mattered. Not like it was a detonated cassette left smoldering in a Honda Civic cupholder, slow-burning through somebody’s first love, somebody’s second breakdown, and a hundred flannel-shrouded basement shows where everyone swore they’d never sell out and half of them already had. Swirlies were the kind of band that soundtracked the part of your life you can’t even take pictures of—the parts that just come back to you in flashes, stained with mildew and feedback.

Some bands don’t die. They fray at the ends, get tangled in your guts, haunt your stereo like a power line fallen in a storm. Still crackling, still hot. Burning Airlines never fit the frame. Too jagged for the narratives, too clean-cut to be lumped in with the noise freaks, too crooked to go pop. They were always in-between. Always mid-collapse. And somehow, that made them eternal.

Formed in 2018, Meltway quickly set themselves apart with their unique blend of shoegaze, indie rock, and dreamy atmospheres. Hailing from Denmark, the band initially consisted of Mathias (vocals/guitar), Mikkel (bass/vocals), Thomas (guitar), and Magnus (drums). Their debut EP, Everytime, hit in 2019, followed by a steady stream of successful festival performances and a sound that consistently pushed boundaries.

If you told me I could only bring one album to a desert island, no hesitation—it’s Spirit of Eden. Not because it’s comforting. Not because it’s familiar. But because it’s the only record I know that feels alive—like it’s breathing in the room with you, reacting to your mood, whispering something different every time you press play.

They’re continents apart. Mumbai. Vennesla. Two rooms, two climates, no shared time zone, no shared breath. Just a signal dragging riffs through lag and latency, pressed flat and grainy through inboxes and cables that probably weren’t built to carry this kind of weight. But it works. Somehow. It still works. And that’s the part that gets under your skin.

There’s a very specific kind of ghost that haunts post-’90s alt rock—bands caught between the death of the major label gold rush and the digital Wild West that followed. Year of the Rabbit is one of those bands, not a bridge but a brick thrown across the chasm. A flare in the fog. The kind of record that disappears in real time and still manages to leave scars.