Three Track Week: Signals #13
- Raven
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Three songs about power, restless minds and the messy process of finding your way back to yourself.
Some songs hit you with noise, some pull you into a mood, and others take their time to reveal what they're really about. This week’s Three Track Week Signals 13 brings those different approaches together with De Staat, Hyper Minds and Lucy Frost. Three very different sounds, but each one turns a difficult feeling into something you can actually hear.
Listen to this week’s Three Track Week: Signals selection
This week's tracks are available in our playlist INDIENOXZINE | Selections, updated weekly on Spotify.
De Staat - When Power Starts Looking Unstable
Power is usually presented as something solid. It sits at the top, gives orders and expects everyone else to adjust. De Staat's “THE UNDERDOG” looks at what happens when that arrangement starts to crack.
The track is the fourth preview of the Dutch band's self-titled seventh album, "DE STAAT" and it pushes their long-running interest in power, manipulation and the line between reality and fiction into a particularly current place. This time, though, the perspective shifts. Instead of looking at the people already holding power, “THE UNDERDOG” turns towards the people who have had enough. That change in perspective is reflected in the song itself. A processed, almost distorted organ drives the track while Torre Florim moves into falsetto, giving the vocal an unexpectedly vulnerable quality. It is a strange combination: the subject is confrontation, but the voice doesn't sound invincible. As the track develops, the tension keeps building until the bass-heavy ending finally gives the song the weight its subject demands. The idea behind “THE UNDERDOG” is deliberately broad. De Staat describe a coalition of people who may disagree on almost everything else but find common ground in their frustration with those at the top. That makes the song less about one political position than about the moment dissatisfaction becomes collective. The question is what happens when people stop looking sideways for someone to blame and start looking upwards instead. That feels particularly relevant in a political culture where frustration can be fragmented almost endlessly. People can disagree about causes, identities and solutions while still recognising the feeling of being pushed around by systems they have little control over. De Staat have been exploring demagoguery and mass manipulation throughout their career, but here the subject feels less abstract.
“THE UNDERDOG” doesn't make the underdog sound triumphant. It sounds cornered, frustrated and finally ready to look towards the people who have been standing above everyone else.
🎧 Stream “The Underdog” on Apple Music · Follow De Staat on Instagram
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Hyper Minds - When Standing Still Isn’t an Option
The title already gives “Sink or Swim” a certain urgency. Hyper Minds don’t make garage punk that sounds particularly interested in waiting around to see what happens. The East Los Angeles band push forward with the kind of nervous energy that makes the song feel slightly out of breath, but never out of control.
That fits the world the band have built around themselves. Formed in 2024, Hyper Minds draw from the fast, scrappy side of garage punk, with influences ranging from The Hives and Osees to the Ramones and The Spits. “Sink or Swim” is the latest example of that approach: direct, restless and built to hit quickly rather than spend too much time explaining itself. But there is something more personal underneath all that noise. Hyper Minds have talked about wanting their music to reach people who are struggling with things of their own, without making those struggles something to be ashamed of. That changes the way I hear the song. The speed isn't just there to make it exciting. It feels like the sound of having too much going on in your head and nowhere to put it. There’s also something very fitting about a young East Los Angeles garage-punk band finding its way through that particular kind of chaos. Punk has always offered a space where frustration can be made physical - through volume, repetition, movement and a room full of people who understand the feeling. Hyper Minds are still at the beginning of their story, but “Sink or Swim” already sounds like it knows exactly what that space is for. The new single also marks the band's signing to DC-Jam Records, putting them alongside artists with much longer histories in punk and alternative music. But there’s nothing especially nostalgic about “Sink or Swim”.
It sounds less like a look backwards than a band trying to make sense of right now. And sometimes the best way to deal with a restless mind is simply to turn the volume up.
🎧 Stream “Sink or Swim” on Apple Music · Follow Hyper Minds on Instagram
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Lucy Frost - When Healing Gets Messy
Healing rarely happens in a straight line. Sometimes you know exactly what went wrong. Sometimes you go back anyway. And sometimes the only way to understand what happened is to turn it into a song.
That tension runs through Lucy Frost’s "Vitamins", a 13-track album that follows burnout, heartbreak and the slow process of finding yourself again. The Boston-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter treats the record almost like a collection of emotional doses: some songs let the anger out, others sit with exhaustion and some find the humor in situations that probably weren't very funny while they were happening. The album is structured around five stages - Prologue, Fated Doom, Retrogression, The Aftermath and Rebirth - tracing a toxic relationship from its impulsive beginning through its collapse and into something that starts to resemble self-love. That structure gives "Vitamins" a sense of movement, but Frost doesn't make healing sound particularly tidy. There is relapse, sarcasm, frustration and the uncomfortable realization that knowing something is bad for you doesn't always mean you're ready to leave it behind. That makes the album feel connected to something larger than one breakup. Modern relationship culture is full of language about red flags, toxic people and moving on, but the reality is usually much less clean. Frost's songwriting leaves room for the contradictions: wanting someone you know isn't good for you, looking for meaning in a relationship that has already fallen apart, or stepping back into dating only to wonder why you bothered. Her background in film scoring also comes through in the way she approaches the record. Frost combines singer-songwriter storytelling with darker pop textures and a cinematic sense of atmosphere, while the writing can suddenly become sarcastic, funny or brutally direct.
"Vitamins" doesn't promise that music can fix everything. It offers something more believable: a place to put all the things that are difficult to carry around quietly.
🎧 Stream “Vitamins” on Apple Music · Follow Lucy Frost on Instagram
Three artists. Three very different ways of turning pressure into music. De Staat look upward and turn frustration with power into something dark, strange and confrontational. Hyper Minds stay closer to the ground, turning restless thoughts and everyday struggles into fast, noisy garage punk. Lucy Frost takes the opposite route, looking inward and making space for the mess that comes with heartbreak, burnout and healing. Different worlds, different sounds, but all three understand the same thing: sometimes a song doesn't have to solve what you're feeling. It just has to give it somewhere to go.
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