On This Track: Midweek Listening #10
Five independent releases about creative resistance, summer memories, emotional honesty, DIY communities and finding perspective when life feels overwhelming.
Music can be a way of pushing back, holding onto a moment, or trying to make sense of something that doesn’t have an easy explanation. This week’s On This Track: Midweek Listening 10 brings together five releases that approach those ideas from very different directions. SlowKiss bring a feminist DIY attitude to their raw alternative rock, Debbie Sings turns a summer memory into electronic pop, and Jared Hart makes room for personal stories that took time to share. Exeter’s pushbike remind us that independent music is also about the people and places around it, while Soccer Mommy looks toward the night sky for a little distance from everyday troubles. Each release has its own sound, but all five connect music to the way we live, feel, and find our place in the world.
SlowKiss - “Let Go”
SlowKiss have spent more than a decade pushing at the edges of alternative rock. Formed in Santiago, Chile, and now based in Spain, the quartet is led by singer and guitarist Elisa Montes. Their sound brings together dense distorted guitars, melodic hooks, dark shoegaze, ’90s grunge, punk, and alternative metal. There’s little interest in making things too neat. “Let Go” is the first single from their upcoming third album, "FRESH", due October via Gunner Records. The album is described as deliberately unpolished and relentless, and the single introduces that approach without smoothing away the band’s rougher edges. SlowKiss also bring a feminist DIY attitude to their work, according to the band’s press materials. That approach connects with a wider DIY tradition in which musicians build their own spaces and networks outside established commercial structures. Research on DIY music communities has examined how these spaces can foster solidarity and alternative forms of cultural participation, while also noting that ideals of inclusion do not always match everyday realities. There’s no need to assign “Let Go” a lyrical meaning that hasn’t been shared. Its place as the first glimpse of FRESH, however, makes it a clear introduction to a band whose identity is tied to a refusal to make their sound more comfortable or conventional.
Debbie Sings - “Ocean Breeze”
Copenhagen singer and producer Debbie Sings looks back at summer on “Ocean Breeze”, a track that turns a familiar memory into something stranger and more mechanical. Heavy sidechain pulses give the production a rolling motion, recalling the ebb and flow of water while keeping the song rooted in electronic pop. Debbie describes it as a love letter to the ocean, being in love, and cowbells. She wrote it as a post-summer reflection on beach days, kissing in the sand and listening to the waves. It’s a simple image, but the timing gives it a particular feeling: the memory is already becoming something you look back on, even while you’re still carrying it. That distance between the moment and the memory is part of what makes the production interesting. The track doesn’t simply recreate a peaceful afternoon by the sea. Its pulsing, almost mechanical movement puts a little friction into the nostalgia. The result is less like stepping back into summer than remembering it from somewhere else. Debbie Sings studied at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and works in a musical environment that includes artists such as Erika de Casier, Smerz, Clarissa Connelly, and Astrid Sonne. Her live performances also combine music, visuals by Signe Dige, and the dancing and hypeperson work of Camilla Lind. The project’s idea of escapism is not presented as a retreat from the world so much as a space where playfulness and social awareness can coexist. “Ocean Breeze” holds onto the intimacy of a personal memory while giving it an unexpected, synthetic shape. It’s a reminder that nostalgia doesn’t have to sound soft or straightforward.
🎧 Stream “Ocean Breeze” by Debbie Sings on Apple Music
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Jared Hart - ”Midnight Motel”
Jared Hart has been part of New Jersey’s alternative and punk community for more than twenty years, working across projects including Mercy Union and his solo career. But his solo songwriting has increasingly developed its own identity: more autobiographical, more vulnerable, and distinct from the music he makes with the band. Released August 28 via Gunner Records and Mt. Crushmore Records, "Midnight Motel" is his first solo full-length since "Past Lives & Pass Lines" in 2015. The ten-song album follows a period in which Hart reportedly hesitated over whether he wanted to release the material at all. That hesitation gives the record an interesting context. A personal song can begin as a private way of working through an experience. Releasing it changes the relationship: something that once belonged to the songwriter becomes available for other people to hear, interpret, and connect with. The decision to share those stories is not necessarily an easy one, particularly when the writing draws closely on lived experience. Hart’s work has long been connected to a particular musical community, and he also runs Mt. Crushmore Records. "Midnight Motel" brings the focus closer to the individual, but it still arrives through the networks and independent structures that have shaped his career. Hart’s solo songwriting has become increasingly personal, giving these songs a different character from his work with Mercy Union. With "Midnight Motel", he returns to that more intimate approach, putting ten new songs out into the world after spending time unsure whether he wanted to release them at all. That hesitation makes the album’s arrival feel particularly personal. It’s a record shaped by someone taking the time to decide what he was ready to share.
🎧 Stream “Midnight Motel” by Jared Heart on Apple Music
pushbike - “Pure Hate”
Exeter band pushbike are steeped in the sound and history of independent guitar music. Their influences stretch from second-wave emo and hardcore to power pop, with connections to Sarah Records, Cherry Red, and C86. The band’s new single “Pure Hate” comes ahead of the "Little Bastard EP", due October 9 on The Bird Records. The four-track EP was recorded in Bristol with Jack Ogborne and runs for less than ten minutes. Its raw, immediate approach draws on a lineage of alternative music that has often valued small-scale production and close connections between musicians and listeners. But pushbike’s story is also about the scene around the songs. The members play in several other bands, help run DIY projects and are involved in making zines and badges. They and their peers use Exeter venue The Cavern as a base, contributing to a local network of musicians and artists. Small venues can play a role in cultural life that goes beyond hosting performances. Research on live music spaces has examined how they support social connections and provide places for cultural production, while studies of DIY scenes show how community activity can help sustain music-making outside established industry structures. Pushbike’s involvement in bands, zines, and other projects gives that broader idea a concrete local dimension.
Soccer Mommy - “Rings of Saturn”
Sophie Allison, who records as Soccer Mommy, returns with “Rings of Saturn”, her first new song in two years. It follows the 2024 album "Evergreen" and was produced by Elliott Kozel. Allison has explained that she wrote the song during a difficult period, when she would often take a telescope into the yard to look at the moon and planets. As she puts it, “There’s something about feeling small that can kind of take the weight off.” That image gives the song a clear emotional starting point. Looking into space doesn’t solve the problems waiting back on Earth. It changes their scale, if only temporarily. The things that seem to fill every corner of your mind become part of a much larger universe, and that shift can make it possible to breathe. There’s something recognizably human in that search for distance. People have long turned to the natural world, the night sky, and other vast perspectives when everyday life becomes difficult to hold. Allison’s account is personal rather than a claim to offer a universal remedy, but it gives “Rings of Saturn” a particular tenderness: the song begins with someone looking for hope wherever she can find it. The release also arrives as Allison prepares to co-headline a US tour with longtime friend Snail Mail. Their shared history adds another thread to the story, connecting the inward-looking song to the friendships and musical relationships that continue alongside an artist’s work.
🎧 Stream “Rings of Saturn” by Soccer Mommy on Apple Music
This week’s releases show how closely independent music can sit alongside everyday questions of identity, belonging, memory, and emotional survival. SlowKiss’s feminist DIY outlook and pushbike’s local network point toward the social structures behind the music: who gets to make it, where it can happen and how people keep those spaces alive. Debbie Sings and Soccer Mommy approach personal feeling through different kinds of distance, one looking back at a summer memory and the other out toward the planets. Jared Hart, meanwhile, turns toward the complicated act of letting private experiences become songs that other people can hear. None of these approaches offers a simple answer. But that may be part of their value. Music can make room for uncertainty, give a fleeting feeling a shape, or connect people who might otherwise never meet. Sometimes the cultural significance of a song lies not in a grand statement, but in the small act of making something and finding others who recognize themselves in it.
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