The Hummingbirds were one of Sydney's greatest indie pop bands. They debuted with the single Alimony and in 1989 released LoveBuzz, featuring 14 tracks of sparkling jangle pop. It spawned the single Blush, which was a minor success, but the failed and the band broke up in 1993. They were vindicated by history when LoveBUZZ made #65 on the 100 Best Australian Albums Of All Time. This year the band reunited for a set at the iconic Big Day Out Festival and a show in Sydney. They were also immortalized in the Modern Giant song The Band's Broken Up (members of the Hummingbirds later joined members of Modern Giant to form The Aerial Maps). [more inside]
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn on Sep 22, 2011 - 54 comments

Overlooked '90s Indie Pop: The Cat's Miaow, whose single sentence wiki describes them as... "an indie pop band formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1992." And Madison Electric, a band from Ann Arbor that played one show in a church basement before going their separate ways.
posted by puny human on May 21, 2011 - 26 comments

It’s maybe a little early yet for year’s end retrospectives, but who cares: we’ve got 157 songs, 10.5 hours, 1.12 GB of “some of the best and most notable music from 2010... covering indie, pop, rock, punk, folk, rap, R&B, soul, dance, country, modern classical, ambient and electronic music, and in many cases, hard-to-classify genre hybrids.” —Curated by FluxBlog’s own Matthew Perpetua.
posted by kipmanley on Dec 3, 2010 - 30 comments

Joe Pop-O-Pie led his San Francisco punk band Pop-O-Pies through countless performances of the band's "hit", an idiosyncratic cover of the Grateful Dead's Truckin'. As the 1980's closed, Joe fell off the map while his other projects went mainstream, but last month the Pop-O-Pies reunited for one more Truckin' performance.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on May 10, 2010 - 15 comments

In 1997, reclusive Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind Jeff Mangum performed a now-legendary set at Athens, Ga. coffee shop Jittery Joe's. One week only on Pitchfork.tv Previously 1 2 3 [more inside]
posted by msalt on May 29, 2009 - 19 comments

"There's sickly pop, there's cheesy pop and then there's the Lightning Seeds brand of pure shiny pop." The Lightning Seeds mixed slick production with equally compelling melodies and lyrics, and produced a number of critically acclaimed albums in the 1990s. Now there's a new album coming out - their first since 1999's Tilt. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Mar 3, 2009 - 38 comments

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was released 10 years ago today. Happy Neutral Milk Hotel day. [more inside]
posted by ludwig_van on Feb 10, 2008 - 123 comments

Indiana's Sardina. The New Pornographers of the '90s, the Sardinas released two fantastic albums full of mixtape fodder. Now everything they've got, including some live gems, is up online.
posted by klangklangston on Sep 25, 2007 - 21 comments

Steven Thomas Erlewine prosecutes Sufjan Stevens A solid indictment of both Stevens and Indie Pop, from AMG's Whole Note series. Hopefully, the Arcade Fire get theirs next.
posted by klangklangston on Jul 12, 2006 - 158 comments

Neutral Milk Hotel demos, videos, and bootlegs. Brainchild of enigmatic, now-reclusive singer/songwriter Jeff Mangum (not Magnum!), the "fuzz-folk" project known as Neutral Milk Hotel began and ended in the 90s and only released two LPs, but is still held as a touchstone by many indie rock critics. More live recordings can be found at the site for Elephant 6, the collective which included NMH and other bands like Beulah, Circulatory System, Elf Power, and Apples in Stereo. The complete discography and more MP3s. Some lyrics. (Previously)
posted by ludwig_van on Feb 22, 2006 - 62 comments

Illin'-Noise! is the new remix of Sufjan Stevens' album Illinois by mc DJ; a torrent is available, as is cover art. It's not quite like Hippocamp Ruins Pet Sounds (previously on Mefi) -- it's not nearly as noisy, and not quite as good, although it's still worth checking out, particularly "Chi-Town" (from "Chicago"), "Zombies" (from "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhh!") and "Jacksontown" (from "Jacksonville"). [prev.]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Sep 12, 2005 - 26 comments

The Confabulators. They Are Confabulators!! They Write About Music!! They Have Come From The Decemberists Board!! Ahhhh! It began on a message board (reg. required). All the latest news about The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, and now, more! Their latest entry: A review of Pitchfork's review of Sufjan's Illinois. That'll teach 'em.
posted by ludwig_van on Aug 8, 2005 - 18 comments