On This Track: Weekend Listening #2
- Anne
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Five releases worth spending time with this weekend
Five releases about identity, expectation and the things we struggle to leave behind
With temperatures climbing across much of Europe, On This Track: Weekend Listening #2 offers five releases worth spending time with indoors. Moving between alternative rock, pop and post-punk, this week's selections explore identity, expectation and the things we struggle to leave behind.
Nova Twins – "Monsters"
Few bands illustrate the changing shape of alternative music quite like Nova Twins. Currently touring North America alongside Evanescence and Spiritbox, the duo have spent the last several years dismantling the traditional boundaries that once separated rock, punk, electronic music and hip-hop. Rather than treating genre as identity, Nova Twins approach it as possibility. "Monsters" captures that philosophy perfectly. Driven by massive hooks, distorted textures and undeniable energy, the track balances confrontation with accessibility without sacrificing either. Their growing presence on festival stages and arena tours suggests something larger than individual success. Alternative music is no longer defined by strict boundaries. Increasingly, artists like Nova Twins are proving that the future belongs to those willing to ignore them.
🎧 Stream "Monsters" on Spotify
Katiuska McLean – "Do Anything"
Born in Trinidad and Tobago and now based in Austria, Katiuska McLean continues to build a catalogue centred on optimism, connection and emotional openness. On "Do Anything", she delivers a bright pop anthem that challenges the idea that happiness can be measured through possessions or status. Instead, the song celebrates friendship, love and the people who remain present when everything else becomes uncertain. Drawing on her Caribbean roots while embracing contemporary pop songwriting, Katiuska McLean creates something intentionally uplifting without losing sight of the realities of modern life. At a time when attention is constantly pulled towards what is bigger, faster and more impressive, "Do Anything" argues for a simpler truth: the things that matter most are often the ones money cannot buy.
🎧 Stream "Do Anything" on Spotify
TV Priest – "The Mud Never Dries"
Four years after their last release, TV Priest return with a song that feels both urgent and unsettling. "The Mud Never Dries" combines post-punk, electronic textures and spoken word into something deliberately unstable, mirroring its central idea: the past never stays in the past. Rather than treating history as a sequence of completed events, the band presents it as something that continues to shape everyday life long after we stop paying attention. Personal memories, political decisions and inherited narratives accumulate layer by layer until they become difficult to separate from the present. The result is one of TV Priest's most abrasive and thought-provoking releases to date. In a culture often obsessed with what comes next, "The Mud Never Dries" serves as a reminder that we are always carrying more of yesterday than we realise.
🎧 Stream "The Mud Never Dries" on Spotify
Kiki Kramer – "prom king"
With "prom king", Kiki Kramer turns her attention towards a familiar figure: the person who never quite leaves the past behind. Built around atmospheric production and late-night melancholy, the song examines the fading magnetism of someone still trying to live inside an earlier version of themselves. Rather than mocking its subject, Kiki Kramer approaches him with a mixture of fascination, sympathy and quiet observation. The result is less a song about aging than about identity. What happens when the qualities that once defined us begin to fade? Set against the backdrop of nightlife, desire and validation, "prom king" explores the uncomfortable space between who we were and who we have become. In a culture obsessed with reinvention, Kramer reminds us that letting go of old versions of ourselves is often harder than creating new ones.
🎧 Stream "prom king" on Spotify
Basht. – "Keira Knightley"
Few things inspire worse decisions than the fear of losing someone. On "Keira Knightley", Dublin quartet Basht. channel that desperation into a tense and emotionally charged piece of post-punk, exploring the lengths people go to in an attempt to preserve a relationship that is already beginning to unravel. Referencing the film "Love Actually" (2003) while drawing from personal experience, the song captures the uneasy transition from affection to jealousy, insecurity and resentment. Yet beneath the relationship narrative lies a broader theme that runs throughout the band's forthcoming debut album "Poor Advice" (out 9th October): the tension between personal desire and the expectations imposed by others. Whether those pressures emerge from relationships, institutions or society itself, Basht. remain interested in the moments when people stop acting freely and begin acting out of fear. "Keira Knightley" transforms that conflict into one of the band's most immediate and compelling releases yet.
🎧 Stream "Keira Knightley" on Spotify
These releases occupy very different musical worlds, yet each revolves around something difficult to leave behind. Whether confronting expectations, revisiting personal history, questioning identity or resisting the pressure to conform, all five artists examine the forces that continue shaping us long after we think we've moved on. Weekend Listening offers a starting point for that conversation, along with five excellent reasons to stay out of the heat for a while.
Explore more of our current selections through On This Track, Three Track Week and the INDIENOXZINE | Selections Spotify playlist.
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