SONGS WE LOVED! 21-27 April 2025
A curated compilation of the most entrancing song releases!
Featuring The Frst, Plastic Rhino, Yogi-G & The Family Tree, Replaced By Robots, The Indestructible Water Bear, Ryan Redwood, THEODOROS, The Blackburns, Phileas Fogg, Burnt Tapes, Dotsun Moon, James Martinez, and Killing Flaw.
Follow the SONGS WE LOVED! playlist on Spotify
The Frst - Ego Is The Enemy
A 38-second detonation of trap-metal rage, Ego Is The Enemy is the proof that the sharpest truths need the fewest words. It's over before your brain can catch up, but its message, 'my ego is the enemy', lands like a punch to the sternum.
Nashville’s The Frst, led by Mikei Gray, slams precision and intensity into this short burst of adrenaline from the sprawling, star-studded punk rock opera This Never Happened.
Produced by George Perks (Skindred) and Matt Malpass (Blink-182), the album features alt-rock and punk icons trading places track by track, each one adding fuel to a record that plays like a pressure valve ready to blow.
Connect with The Frst
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Plastic Rhino - TAKEITALL
Plastic Rhino throw genre rules out the window with TAKEITALL, fusing industrial hard rock with glitchy dubstep and EDM for a chaotic, hypnotic sound that’s both sleek and savage.
The LA-based alt-rock duo lean into a wild new direction, with Atara Glazer’s fierce vocals unraveling a true story of obsession gone off the rails.
Produced by Tom Chandler and Ron Geffen, the track’s BPM inspired a hilariously surreal 80s-style Jazzercise video, adding tongue-in-cheek energy to the darker lyrical themes. Think Poppy meets Bring Me The Horizon, with a VHS workout tape running in the background.
Connect with Plastic Rhino
Website // Facebook // Instagram // YouTube // Spotify
Yogi-G & The Family Tree - Shine On (Brother)
A burst of sun through grey skies, Shine On (Brother) lands like a much-needed jolt of joy. The new single from Yogi-G & The Family Tree, featuring the powerhouse vocals of Queen Vee and Chris Barton, is a bright, groove-soaked preview of the band’s upcoming album Show Me The Truth, due May 23rd.
Led by Gaz Whelan (Happy Mondays co-founder & Ivor Novello-winning songwriter), the song carries his Madchester heartbeat into a new era; it’s full of confidence and warmth, alive with bouncing rhythms and vocal chemistry that is nothing short of exhilarating.
Be sure to catch the band live at Wax & Beans in Bury on May 17th.
Connect with Yogi-G & The Family Tree
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Replaced By Robots - The Laboratory
Replaced By Robots dive headfirst into retro-futurist indie rock with The Laboratory, the opening track of their debut mini-album The Experiment.
Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie (Pixies, Radiohead) and Josh Hager (Devo), the song kicks off with a twangy surf guitar riff and vocals that dart around the beat like they’re dodging laser beams in a lo-fi sci-fi movie. There’s a playful weirdness baked into the rhythm, like someone built a garage rock song from spare parts lying around a synth-pop workshop.
The sound is glam-leaning and deliberately jagged, the kind of sonic stew that owes just as much to Pulp and Blur as it does to early new wave and post-punk.
Connect with Replaced By Robots
Website // Bandcamp // Instagram // YouTube // Spotify
The Indestructible Water Bear - Missing You
Hailing from Philadelphia and fronted by Gail Farmer’s radiant vocals, indie rock outfit The Indestructible Water Bear blends ‘90s alt nostalgia through a sharp, emotionally charged lens
Missing You is a jangly, emo-tinged indie rock banger that feels like the quiet ache of remembering, wrapped in dreamlike guitars and mellifluous vocals.
The song is taken from the band's debut album, Everything Is OK - an exploration of love in all its tangled forms: romantic, platonic, and parental, without promising neat resolutions.
Connect with The Indestructible Water Bear
Website // Facebook // Instagram // YouTube // Spotify
Ryan Redwood - Tomorrow
On Tomorrow, the East Coast singer-songwriter leans into the weight of impermanence, asking the kind of questions that don’t come with neat answers.
Built alongside longtime friend and producer Aaron Lambert, Tomorrow wraps Ryan’s indie rock edge in an atmospheric haze, where each lyric feels like it’s searching for something just out of reach. There’s a tension between the beauty of the present and the fear of what’s next, that hits from the very first line: "What’s left of this place when it ends, tomorrow?"
With haunting guitar textures and a slow-burning build, Tomorrow plays like a quiet storm, holding you in place while the world spins a little too fast.
Connect with Ryan Redwood
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THEODOROS - Sometimes We Dream
On his debut solo album, Every Day I Die, THEODOROS (of legendary Greek post-punk band Lefki Symphonia) crafts a compelling return to the dark underworld of post-punk. Icy guitars, haunted synths, and relentless rhythms form the backbone of a sound that's as emotional as it is darkly compelling.
Rooted in classic post-punk tradition but unafraid to adopt a modern aesthetic, the record features poetic, allegorical lyrics and his signature melodic vocals, offering a journey through personal decay, rebirth, and the perpetual dance between light and dark.
Connect with THEODOROS
Bandcamp // Facebook // Instagram // Website // Spotify // YouTube
The Blackburns - Video Den
Philly’s power-pop band The Blackburns are back with Video Den, the first taste of their upcoming sophomore album, and it’s everything fans have come to love from this band: melodic, nostalgic, and irresistibly infectious.
Formed by veterans of the local DIY punk and indie scenes, The Blackburns blend jangly guitars, radiant vocals, and cinematic storytelling into a sound that recalls the golden age of '90s movie soundtracks.
With Joel Tannenbaum and Nick Palmer at the songwriting helm, Video Den feels like an ode to growing up and finally punching out of your last retail shift - a ghost of your former self still flickering in fluorescent light.
Connect with The Blackburns
Bandcamp // Facebook // Instagram // Spotify
Phileas Fogg - Vorbei
Taken from Stuttgart’s post-punk band Phileas Fogg's latest album 'ALLESMUSSSEINENDEFINDEN', VORBEI blends stark, minimalist instrumentation with poetic existentialism, feeling like a quiet conversation with the end of something; maybe a moment, a chapter, a person.
With lyrics like "Alles geht vorbei, alles muss sein Ende finden" (Everything passes, everything must come to an end), it’s not mournful, but accepting. A nod to life’s impermanence without the need for drama. Just a little melancholy, a little beauty, and a lot of truth.
Connect with Phileas Fogg
Bandcamp // Facebook // Instagram // Website // Spotify // YouTube
Burnt Tapes - MOTHERSGUILT
London punks Burnt Tapes return with MOTHERSGUILT, a snarling, anthemic punch to the chest and the first cut from their forthcoming LP New Lungs (out August 8th).
Steeped in themes of burnout, disillusionment, and the quiet weight of not measuring up, the song sees the band doubling down on their signature lethal punk cocktail: wild guitars, earth-shattering drums, and fervent vocals.
Connect with Burnt Tapes
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Dotsun Moon - Give Up The Tears
Photo credit Meredith Snow
On Give Up The Tears, Dotsun Moon trades heartbreak for hope with an anthemic dreamgaze shimmer. Richard Flierl channels his alt roots into soaring synths, propulsive drums, and guitars - it's a song built for golden-hour drives; melancholy in tone, but defiant in spirit.
Swapping the band’s former female-led vocals for a fully solo vision, this is Dotsun Moon at its most vulnerable and radiant.
Connect with Dotsun Moon
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James Martinez - On The Edge Again
On The Edge Again is a quiet, luminous ache wrapped in an inspiring indie folk ballad.
Written in the shadow of a relapse, on the very day James Martinez chose to pull himself back from the brink, this song doesn’t ask for sympathy or grand gestures. It simply tells the truth, in the gentlest way possible.
It’s not the darkness of the experience itself, but the clarity, vulnerability, and beauty in how it’s expressed; the way James Martinez turns something devastating into something open, human, and strangely tender.
Connect with James Martinez
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Killing Flaw - I Am
I Am is pure heavy blues rock, unfiltered and to the point.
Killing Flaw leans into their power trio chemistry here - tight rhythm, enthralling vocals, and a groove that will take you to new heights of musical ecstasy. It’s stripped back, loud, and built to stick.
Connect with Killing Flaw
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About Chris Roditis
Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.
Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com
