bandcamp friday recommendations (jul 2025 edition)

16 Jul, 2025

My excellent good friends: the next Bandcamp Friday draws near! For the uninitiated, Bandcamp Friday is a day where Bandcamp waives their portion of sales on the website, so every dollar you spend goes to the artists. The next one is on August 1st, which is like two weeks out. That's not very much time! And let me tell you, I have some fun recommendations for you this time around.

Last time, as you might expect, I immediately realized there were several bands on Bandcamp that I had somehow forgotten about (and I promise you this is not a slight on them, some of my favorite bands are in this list), so I started planning for the next installment of this series immediately. But I didn't feel there was enough there to merit a full post (and also given that most of the artists I was into before are no longer active) so I also tracked down some new music, just for you, my beloved readers. I am pleased to inform you that I have found some bangers.

Anyway. Music!

Cool Bands For Cool And Attractive People

• Sleepy Kitty - Sleepy Kitty is such a cool band. They are an absolute treat live--watching Paige Brubeck using loop pedals to give their two-piece indie rock sound way more texture than you'd expect is a delight--but they've also been on a pretty regular rotation for me for eons of your years. Brubeck is an amazing vocalist and I'm convinced Evan Sult does some actual magic on drums. I think every band I've seen him involved with absolutely slaps. Their newest album, Blessing/Curse, came out in 2023 and is very good; I also listen to Infinity City and Projection Room a lot. They also seem to have a new project called The Tommy Crystal, which only has a few tracks right now, but, y'know, worth keeping an eye on.
• Deep Sea Diver - I found Deep Sea Diver early in my quest to find new cool music, sadly a little bit too late to catch a live show supporting their new album, Billboard Heart. I fell in love more or less immediately. Indie rock with some great emotional vocals from Jessica Dobson and some ethereal guitars and a little bit of edge . . . and they're a Seattle band. What's not to love?
• Horsegirl - Normally the whole "doesn't let you actually stream the full album on Bandcamp" thing would have been too much friction for me to check a band out but I found Horsegirl pretty early in my search, before I had a veritable glut of cool bands to check out, and I really liked their new album, Phonetics On and On, when I used a streaming service to give it a listen. It's stripped down indie noise pop (though all the reviews note that this is a departure from their first album, which I guess was overall noisier?). But here the minimalist sound means that every single sound feels very deliberate, to, in my estimation, very good effect. They're a fun three-piece band consisting of two women and a nonbinary person. Fun!
• Starlight Mints - A classic entry in the field of "bands that have long since broken up", I didn't even know Starlight Mints had a Bandcamp page, but you can check them out and listen to the band that I had always assumed was extremely popular despite there being zero evidence of this! Extremely fun mid-2000s indie pop. Sadly doesn't have their first album, but what can you do?
• Skating Polly - People call Skating Polly riot grrl but I think they say they aren't? I quite like them. A Tacoma band with a satisfying punk edge (and a name which I suspect is a joke on Celtic punk band Flogging Molly), there's a lot of standout tracks on their latest album, Chaos County Line, which is also a double album. That's twice as much music for your dollar! Saw them live this past weekend and it was a delight.
• Bound Stems - When Harvey Danger went on their first hiatus, Evan Sult moved to Chicago and became one of the founding members of Bound Stems, who are described as an "indie rock band with math rock influences" by Wikipedia. Intricate but catchy. Sadly this is only their second album, The Family Afloat--probably my favorite of the two they released but their first album, Appreciation Night, is very worth tracking down. It is a damn shame Bound Stems aren't putting out music anymore because the two albums we have are great.
• Illuminati Hotties - An LA band fronted by Sarah Tudzin, who self-describes on Bandcamp as a "tenderpunk pioneer." I checked out their latest album, POWER, and it found its way basically right away into my regular rotation. Then in the lead up to seeing them live this weekend (which was extremely fun) I listened to some of the earlier stuff and there is also some great material back there! Excited to check that out more soon.¹
• Black Dresses - It's Joey Comeau's fault I like this band. Back when he was streaming chess on twitch dot tee vee he played WASTEISOLATION a ton. It's industrial music by a duo of trans women in Canada, and it is rad as fuck. I don't usually listen to industrial music but Black Dresses slap. I believe they have since retired as a band, but there's a lot to choose from here.
• UNBEATABLE - Unbeatable is an upcoming rhythm game where the pitch is "a game where music is illegal and you do crimes" and I think that's also the name of the fictional band from that game? Anyway, their music slaps. Very solid garage band vibe. This game looks sick as hell. There's some demos you can check out and I had fun with them.
• Pom Pom Squad - I ended up adding Pom Pom Squad to my list after I had already decided I probably had enough material for another post so I should stop. They're real good! Wikipedia is calling them indie rock slash grunge and I think that tracks? I love Mia Berrin's vocals and Mirror Starts Moving Without Me is a real solid album.²

Updates From Last Time!

I don't know how often I will be running this Bandcamp Friday recommendations feature, but it is my intention to not repeat bands; those old recommendations are still good, and I want to deliver only the freshest of takes to you, my beloved readers. However! Two of the bands from last time have new albums! And I want to make note of new albums.

• Johanna Warren has released The Night of the Wind, which is apparently a concept album based on a fairytale book she made when she was three? I haven't checked it out yet but what a cool idea.
• The Beths have a new album coming out at the end of August, Straight Line Was A Lie. I've really enjoyed both of the new tracks they've put out so far.

#essay #music