Our regular look at artists worth paying attention to now.
Three acts with new music, growing momentum and a reason to get on your radar before everybody else catches up.
– WORDS BY JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
SOUR WIDOWS
Sour Widows have spent the last few years making guitar music that rarely takes the shortest route anywhere. The Bay Area group’s songs can stretch, fracture and suddenly get heavy, but Maia Sinaiko and Susanna Thomson have increasingly found ways to make all of that movement feel immediate rather than difficult for its own sake.
New single “Lucky Star” might be the clearest example yet. Released August 24, it arrives ahead of Sigil, Sour Widows’ second album, due October 23 through Julia’s War Recordings. Produced with Melina Duterte of Jay Som in Los Angeles, the record finds the band working with more direct structures without sanding down the stranger instincts that made 2024’s Revival of a Friend so interesting. “Lucky Star” still twists in unexpected directions, but there is a chorus sitting right in the middle of it. Stereogum promptly named it one of the week’s five best new songs.
“Blood In The Grass,” released ahead of it, shows how wide Sigil could reach, with Thomson writing the song for Babehoven’s Maya Bon and the band expanding its usual guitar setup with strings, synths and other studio details. The encouraging part is that none of it sounds like Sour Widows trying to become easier to explain. They just sound increasingly confident about how much can fit inside one of their songs. Dallas gets to see the new version up close when Sour Widows play Ruins on October 27.
Slow Fiction
Photo by Miles Wilson
Slow Fiction are past the point where “promising New York band” tells you very much. After a couple of EPs and support runs with Wet Leg, English Teacher and Vundabar, the five-piece finally released their debut album dollhouse on August 7, and it feels less like an introduction than a band arriving with most of its decisions already made.
Fronted by Julia Vassallo, Slow Fiction make guitar music that can move from tightly wound indie rock into something much bigger without telegraphing the switch. The album was self-produced by the band and mixed by Sonny DiPerri, whose work with DIIV and julie makes sense here: guitars are everywhere, but they are used for texture and tension as much as volume. “junior year” gets there quickly, while “satellite” and six-minute closer “turning down flowers” show how comfortable Slow Fiction have become letting a song expand.
There are recognizable reference points, Sonic Youth, Pixies and the noisier end of ’90s indie rock are never especially far away, but dollhouse works because Slow Fiction don’t seem interested in turning those references into a costume. The record is messy in the useful sense: melodic, abrasive and occasionally beautiful without making a big announcement every time it changes direction. This feels like the record that moves them out of the emerging-band conversation fairly quickly.
DICE
DICE are already considerably bigger at home in Australia than the word RADAR might suggest. The Perth four-piece have spent three consecutive years among triple j’s most-played artists, sold out shows internationally and turned 2024 debut Midnight Zoo into an ARIA-charting record. Their second album suggests the rest of the world might start catching up.
I Thought The Altitude Would Make It Worth The View arrived July 31 after the band decamped to Hollywood’s EastWest Studios with producer Joe Chiccarelli, whose credits include The Strokes and The White Stripes. Jay Watson of Pond and Tame Impala contributed to the sessions, as did G Flip, and the difference is immediately noticeable. The guitars are still there, but DICE have opened the songs up with synths, cleaner production and a considerably bigger sense of scale.
“COOLER” introduced that shift earlier this year, but “Call Me For A Good Time,” “Loose Change” and album-day single “Echo” make a better case for where DICE are heading. This no longer sounds like a young Australian guitar band hoping somebody outside Australia notices. They are touring internationally, filling increasingly large rooms at home and making records with the infrastructure to travel well beyond the scene that produced them. RADAR might not fit for much longer.
