Add to playlist: the beautifully dazed, countrified indie-rock of Tracey Nelson and the week’s best new tracks

From New York City, New York
Recommended if you like The Clean, This is Lorelei, The Feelies
Up next Debut album Hercules out 10 July

Tracey Nelson’s self-titled 2025 debut EP was one of the year’s best lesser-heard gems: Five tracks of sparkling, winsome indie-rock that recalled classic antipodean jangle bands the Clean, Twerps and Dick Diver. Tracks such as New Years Flowers and Just Shoot Me Now suggested that Austin Noll – the NYC-based singer-songwriter behind the project – was a classicist with a keen sense for bright melodies and self-deprecating one-liners.

This July, Noll will release Hercules, his first full-length, on Perennial, an imprint of the beloved Olympia, Washington label K Records, which in recent years has released great LPs by garage rockers Sharp Pins and the amorphous Los Angeles band Dummy. Co-produced by the North Carolina musicians MJ Lenderman and Colin Miller – and performed by a murderers row that includes Lenderman and Miller alongside Landon George, Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman, Xandy Chelmis, Ethan Baechtold and former Hotline TNT guitarist Jack Kraus – Hercules amps up the country elements of last year’s EP while giving Noll and his band more space to breathe.

Tracks such as Two Feet and St John’s River amble about in a dazed, friendly way that makes the record’s summer release date a no-brainer; lead single Hercules is a warm spotlight for Noll’s warbling, characterful voice. “I’ll carry you with me wherever I go,” he sings, drawing out each word with a faint sense of adoration and affirmation. The whole of Hercules balances deftly on this tightrope between melancholy and geniality, establishing Noll as an unshowy songwriter with a deeply clarified sense of self. Shaad D’Souza

This week’s best new tracks

Pozer. Photograph: Henry Goodfellow

Pozer – Hulk Hogan (ft AJ Tracey)
Delivering social realism over Jersey club beats, the Croydon MC is in a class of one in the UK scene, and AJ Tracey turns in an excellent verse as he locks in alongside Pozer’s galloping pace. BBT

Zoh Amba – Another Time
The remarkable free jazz saxophonist turns equally remarkable songwriter for a record that twists their Appalachian roots with open-hearted, choppy indie rock, backed by Jim White on drums. LS

One Leg One Eye – Many Are My Names Besides
One to drag you back to the cruelest depths of winter: George Brennan and Lankum’s Ian Lynch twist scratchy drone and distorted wailing into true willies-inducing horror. LS

Enter Shikari – Dead in the Water
A highlight from the rave-rockers’ surprise and brilliantly overstimulated new album Lose Your Self out today: imagine Everything Everything spliced with the Prodigy and Bring Me the Horizon. BBT

James K – Peel (Loidis remix)
Loidis (also known as ambient-techno master Huerco S) turns in a 14-minute remix of James K’s ethereal dancehall-pop tune, turning it into snappy Luomo-esque microhouse – and perfect beach sunset fodder. BBT

Ambrose Akinmusire and Mary Halvorson – Soundcheck
You could discern the sound of breathing or a distant siren in Akinmusire’s disarming trumpet playing, further unsettled by the arrival of Halvorson’s guitar – before both get down to skittish play. LS

Max F – Dream Channel (Space Ghost Club Remix)
The kind of piano-centred house instrumental that you play as the sun is filtering through the warehouse rave windows, with everyone air-plinking along to its detailing: life-affirming music. BBT

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