- Far from the bright lights of the music industry, a subculture of folk-punk healthily maintains its existence, played on acoustic instruments and often in informal venues.

- Vanessa Marousopoulos’ debut EP under the moniker Keeskea comes hotly anticipated by the two cities she calls home, Adelaide and Brisbane. If you’ve seen her in any number of local acts, including Bloom Parade and Sleep Club, you’d already be familiar with her particular brand of enchantment. With total control over the suite of tracks on Find Yourself Alone, she only grows more spellbinding.

- “Influence”, definition: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself. 

- Jay Som’s music has always teetered between genres, blurring their lines in a dreamy haze, even as her music sheds light on her life. Themes such as Asian-American and queer cultural intersectionality, nostalgia and millennial life are all given an effective vehicle in her signature blend of lo-fi indie rock. However, on Anak Ko, “my child” in English, Jay Som is experimenting with the music much more adventurously.

- “Where are the folks like you and I?” The question is posed on the recent single, Velvet Paradise, from the new record by southern duo, Broads. It has hidden depth, multiple meanings and it’s central to what’s going on here. By turns it has elements that are pouting and plaintive, mysterious, menacing, seductive and melancholy. If you were going to try and boil it down to one thing I guess it would be this: Broads questions what it is, in the present day, to be a dangerous woman.

- Braindrops is the second album in as many years from Tropical Fuck Storm and an album that leaps over the mordant bar set by its predecessor. Their sophomore album heightens the energy but does so by being less outwardly jarring. This may simply be a result of the band becoming more familiar, but, hey, I still wouldn't describe what they do as 'easily digestible'.

- It’s fifteen years now since The Hold Steady first sent the music press into fits of delirium. Mixing cheesy classic rock riffs with a short-story writer’s sense of observation and turn of phrase; filling their songs with musical in-jokes; the band seemed made for music nerds and critics.