Thirty-two songs, two and a half hours. Shoegaze, dream pop, trip hop and downtempo, and a few that slip between all of them. Slowdive, Lush, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Deerhunter, Khruangbin, Thievery Corporation, Everything But The Girl, UNKLE and LTJ Bukem, with The Bilinda Butchers, Tummyache, Glazyhaze and Oeil. Press escape any time.
Tap a song, then Play from to jump the player there. The song that’s playing lights up.
The Submarines are the Los Angeles duo of Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti, married at the time. Lush chamber pop, strings and synths. Hazard is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter and later became president of his literary estate, and their songs soundtracked Apple iPhone ads. Amp Live is the producer half of Bay Area hip-hop duo Zion I. In 2007 he reworked Radiohead’s In Rainbows into Rainydayz Remixes. Warner/Chappell sent a cease-and-desist, then a fan campaign led to a settlement letting him give it away free, and Wired named it its best free download of the week in February 2008. This remix is off Honeysuckle Remixes (2009, Nettwerk). As of 2025 The Submarines were on hiatus.
Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt reinvented themselves, folk-jazz-pop to trip-hop and drum-and-bass, with Walking Wounded (1996, Virgin). A genuine late-career rebirth. Watt made it not long after nearly dying of Churg-Strauss syndrome, a rare autoimmune illness, and later wrote the acclaimed memoir Patient about it. Critics still read the record as a document of survival, not despair. Thorn has written several books of her own, and the pair got back together musically in 2023 with Fuse, after decades apart.
Karen and Don Peris met in a 1980 Catholic-school production of Godspell and later married. They lead this Lancaster, Pennsylvania trio with bassist Mike Bitts. Thirteen studio albums, moving from ’80s alt-pop toward the hushed, intimate dream-folk of Small Planes (2001, What Are Records?). NASA picked their earlier song “Bright as Yellow” as a real astronaut wake-up call aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-124 in 2008. A rare honor for a band this unassuming. Their thirteenth album, Midwinter Swimmers, came out in 2024.
Love Spells is Sir Taegen Harris, out of Houston, Texas, and based in LA. Dream pop with indie rock running underneath and a falsetto that floats right over the top. He wrote poems first and turned them into songs. Kevin Abstract brought him onto his 2025 album Blush, he opened for Sharon Van Etten on tour, and his debut album, Love Is the Law, came out on RCA. 'Love Costs' is one of his singles. A lot of earned momentum, fast.
Teen Daze is Jamison Isaak, a prolific Canadian producer from Abbotsford, BC. He came out of the 2010 chillwave scene and has spent a decade and a half moving through house, ambient and indie-pop textures. All of Us, Together came out in 2012 on Lefse Records. His 2021 album Interior won the Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year in 2023. That’s Canada’s top music honor.
The Bilinda Butchers. Dream pop that started out in San Francisco, with Adam Honingford on guitar. They took their name from Bilinda Butcher of My Bloody Valentine. 'Secrets' closes their Regret, Love, Guilt, Dreams EP, which came out on Bandcamp on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011. Their singer said he was an emotional, rebellious teenager back then, and he wanted the title to reflect that. Three years later they put out their first full-length album, Heaven, a concept record set in Edo-period Japan.
Fiona Apple was eighteen when Tidal (1996, Work/Columbia) came out. The songs were written through her teens, straight from her journals. Tidal won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, via “Criminal,” and it opened the door for a generation of uncompromising singer-songwriters after her. She’s stayed fiercely independent since, including 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which won two Grammys.
Atlanta’s Deerhunter. Fronted by the prolific Bradford Cox, formed in 2001, blending shoegaze, garage and glam. Halcyon Digest (2010, 4AD) is widely considered their high-water mark, landing near the top of 2010 year-end lists, including No.3 at Pitchfork. Their most recent album is Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2019), and the band’s been on hiatus since its late-2019 tour, with members pursuing side projects.
Troubleman is a 2000s alias of English producer Mark Pritchard, better known for the celebrated ambient album 76:14 as Global Communication. Nina Miranda is the Brazilian-English singer who fronted trip-hop group Smoke City. Time Out of Mind (2004, Far Out Recordings) is Pritchard’s Brazilian-tinged electro-funk collaboration with several vocalists. He’s since recorded under his own name too, including Tall Tales, a 2025 Warp Records album made jointly with Thom Yorke.
Blockhead is Tony Simon, from Manhattan. Best known as Aesop Rock’s primary beatmaker, but Music By Cavelight (2004, Ninja Tune) was his solo debut, and it’s noticeably smoother and more melodic than his rap-adjacent work. Real range beyond making beats for other MCs. He put out two albums in 2024, Luminous Rubble and Mortality Is Lit!
Rob Garza and Eric Hilton built Thievery Corporation around Washington DC’s Eighteenth Street Lounge in 1995, mixing dub, bossa nova, Indian classical and acid jazz. “Sweet Tides” features vocalist LouLou Ghelichkhani. Radio Retaliation (2008, ESL Music) got a Grammy nomination for its packaging, and the duo have used their platform to support the UN World Food Programme. They put out Midnight Ragas in 2025.
LTJ Bukem, pronounced BOOK-em, from the Hawaii Five-O catchphrase “book ’em, Danno”. Classically trained pianist turned foundational atmospheric-jungle DJ. His label Good Looking Records defined the melodic, jazzy wing of drum & bass through the Logical Progression series. Journey Inwards (2000, Good Looking) is his debut solo album and reached UK #40. AllMusic called it “an album of pure brilliance” that showed his production still growing a decade into his career.
Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase’s NYC trio traded scrappy garage-punk for synths on It’s Blitz! (2009, Interscope), to wide acclaim, and “Skeletons” was the album’s third single. The songwriting held up well enough that Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men covered it in 2013. A nice marker of a song’s staying power beyond its own fanbase.
UNKLE is English DJ James Lavelle’s revolving-cast project, launched out of his legendary Mo’Wax label and made famous by 1998’s Psyence Fiction with DJ Shadow. “Invasion” (off 2003’s Never, Never, Land, Mo’Wax) has Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja on vocals. He’s one of a guest list across three decades that’s also had Thom Yorke, Ian Brown and Michael Kiwanuka, real testament to how much the music community trusts Lavelle’s ear. Their most recent release is the 2022 mixtape Rōnin II.
Submotion Orchestra. A seven-piece out of Leeds fusing dubstep, soul, jazz and dub around singer Ruby Wood, formed in 2009 out of an Arts Council-funded event at York Minster. Fragments (2012, Exceptional Records) is their second album. “All Yours”, from their 2011 debut Finest Hour, was sampled by Bryson Tiller on “Right My Wrongs”, which went six-times platinum. Genuine mainstream reach, flowing out of a Leeds jazz-dubstep collective. They released the album Passed Me By in May 2026.
Tummyache is Soren Bryce, a multi-instrumentalist from Amarillo, Texas. Her sound has moved from noisier post-punk textures toward atmospheric songwriting. “Interstate Dr”, released as a single in May 2026, was written after she lost her father. Her earlier solo work was strong enough to be crowdfunded past $10,000 and premiered on NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Pretz is a solo ambient-electronic side project of British jazz pianist Neil Cowley. Classically trained prodigy, played Shostakovich at Queen Elizabeth Hall at age ten, later a sideman for Brand New Heavies and Zero 7, then led the BBC Jazz Award-winning Neil Cowley Trio. Soundcastles (2006, I Label) is his textural detour from jazz-trio work. His session credits include piano on Adele’s 19 and 21. The Trio reunited in 2024 for the album Entity.
Reading’s Slowdive, led by Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell. They made Souvlaki (1993, Creation) despite being savaged by the UK press at the time, and it’s now considered a genre-defining shoegaze classic. Brian Eno spent a few days recording with them, adding keyboards and treatments to two tracks he’s also credited as co-writing. A rare direct endorsement from one of ambient music’s founding figures. The band split up in 1995, reunited in 2014, and released everything is alive in 2023.
Doves are Jimi Goodwin and twins Jez and Andy Williams, from Manchester. They started as the dance act Sub Sub until a devastating 1996 studio fire destroyed their equipment. Jez Williams later called the choice to carry on “quite a liberating feeling,” and the band moved toward the atmospheric, elegiac sound that opens Lost Souls (2000, Heavenly). It was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Their sixth album, Constellations for the Lonely, followed in 2025.
Polly Jean Harvey, from Bridport, Dorset. One of British music’s most restless artists, reinventing her sound album to album. Is This Desire? (1998, Island) was her shift from raw guitar rock into atmospheric electronics. She’s the only artist ever to win the Mercury Prize twice, in 2001 and 2011, and it’s the same restless craft on display here. Her tenth album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, followed in 2023.
Khruangbin. The name is Thai for “airplane,” pronounced KRUNG-bin. Laura Lee, Mark Speer and DJ Johnson, a Houston trio mixing Thai funk, dub and soul into an instantly recognizable groove. Leon Bridges is the Fort Worth soul singer they teamed up with on the Texas Sun and Texas Moon EPs. More than a decade into their career, Khruangbin were nominated for Best New Artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards. A rare, well-earned late arrival.
Steve Kilbey’s Australian band The Church, formed in Sydney in 1980, broke through with Starfish (1988) and its enduring single “Under the Milky Way.” A 2008 readers’ poll voted it the best Australian song of the previous twenty years, and it was performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the 2006 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. A song that grew past indie radio into something like a national anthem. Kilbey, the sole remaining founding member since 2020, has led the band on through Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars (2024).
Men I Trust. Emmanuelle Proulx, Jessy Caron and Dragos Chiriac, out of Quebec City. They self-release everything and built a devoted following on hazy, hypnotic melody alone. Respected rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith licensed one of her images for their Untourable Album cover at a steep discount, saying she did it “for the love of music.” Real critical respect for a fully DIY band. In 2025 they released the companion albums Equus Asinus and Equus Caballus.
NYC duo Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener spent the ’90s mixing shoegaze guitar wash with trip-hop rhythm and dub bass. Beat (1996, Kranky) is where that sound peaked. Critic Simon Reynolds credited them with basically inventing a distinctively American strand of post-rock. A huge, enveloping sound from just two people. They haven’t recorded or performed since their final album, Lushlife (2000).
Texas Sun (2020, Dead Oceans) was the first of Khruangbin and Leon Bridges’ two Texas collaborations, pairing the Houston trio’s laid-back instrumental groove with Bridges’ Fort Worth soul voice. Khruangbin formed in 2010 and went on to a Best New Artist nomination at the 2025 Grammy Awards. Remarkable recognition, fourteen years in.
West Indian Girl. LA dream pop and psych, built around Robert James and Francis Ten. Their hazy, Madchester-tinged self-titled debut came out on Astralwerks in 2004. Vocalist Mariqueen Maandig went on to co-found How to Destroy Angels with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Real industry pedigree in this act’s lineage.
Glazyhaze. Shoegaze quartet out of Venice, Italy: Irene, Lorenzo, Francesco and Vsevolod. Their 2023 debut Just Fade Away mixes dark atmosphere with dreamy melody. They’ve shared stages with Trentemøller, Hater and Film School, serious peer validation for a young band. Their second album, Sonic, followed in March 2025, and they toured Europe and the UK in 2026.
London’s Lush. Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson on guitars and vocals, with Phil King and Chris Acland. Among the era’s most respected shoegaze bands, and they played the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. Split (1994, 4AD) sits right where shoegaze meets Britpop. Acland died in 1996 and the band formally split in 1998. They reunited briefly in 2015–16, then disbanded again after a final show in November 2016.
Oeil (French for “eye”) are a Tokyo shoegaze act built around vocalist Satoko Takaoka and guitarist-producer Takafumi Hibino. They debuted with the Urban Twilight EP in 2007 on Submarine Records. Far Out Magazine named it one of the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time in 2019, a strong critical nod for a self-driven Tokyo project. They released Dream within a Dream in 2025.
The Meeting Places. LA dream pop, formed in 2001 around Chase Harris. Their debut Find Yourself Along The Way (2003, Words on Music) channeled early-’90s dream pop, and Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart produced it. Genuine indie pedigree behind the boards. They played SXSW and the SF Noise-Pop Fest before going quiet, and the album was remastered for a vinyl reissue in 2024.
Melbourne’s The Paper Kites, fronted by Sam Bentley. Roses (2021) is a guest-vocalist concept album, and this one features Julia Stone of Angus & Julia Stone. Their breakout single “Bloom” went platinum in the US and also certified in the UK, Canada, Italy and Denmark. Rare crossover success for an Australian folk act. Their seventh album, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, followed in January 2026.
Mark Kozelek, formerly of Red House Painters, leads this San Francisco quartet. Ghosts of the Great Highway (2003, Jetset) is the acclaimed debut LP, five stars from AllMusic, and the critical consensus around Kozelek’s songwriting has held for over two decades. “Duk Koo Kim” is named for the Korean boxer Kim Duk-koo, whose death from a 1982 title-fight injury led boxing authorities to cut championship bouts from fifteen rounds to twelve. Kozelek has a recurring habit of naming songs after boxers, like “Salvador Sanchez” on the same album.