Chorusgirl - No Moon

Emerging as one of the breakout stars of this weekend just gone's Indietracks (much as Indietracks can truly have a breakout band, but you know what we mean), Chorusgirl take up the female-fronted fuzzbomb art-pop baton that the Darling Buds, Lush and the Long Blondes help patent - jangling guitars carrying along a bucketful of big hooks, Silvi Wersing's strident, cool-as vocals, joy camouflaging the pain. Their contribution to Odd Box Records' 100 Club series (already sold out on vinyl) sounds radio ready, if radio was ever interested in radio-ready guitar pop any more.

Post War Glamour Girls - Felonious Punk

Great title. No idea what's going on with this new track, either in intentions - introduced with no content it's possibly a track from a new album or EP - or in sound, as the brooding dam bursts into something ultra-distorted and actually not too far in noisy riffola scope and undercurrents of electronics from Muse. Sorry, guys. On top of all that James Smith's dark fury at everything else remains thankfully undiminished.

Gun Outfit - Gotta Wanna

We've written about Olympia, Washington's Gun Outfit on and off over the years, usually commending their lo-fi streamlined attack in the ballpark of Sebadoh and No Age. Yeah, well, forget all that for the first single from their fourth album Dream All Over, out 16th October, as they've moved to LA and gone all Nancy and Lee, set out in the dust-swept canyons and night-time creep of an imaginary outlaw western as singer-guitarists Carrie Keith and Dylan Sharp twang, shuffle and sort of harmonise after berating each other's fortunes.

DRINKS - Laying Down Rock

A quick one as we need to catch up - the second single from Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley of White Fence's collaboration, a purposefully awkward jigsaw piece of riff repetition-based west coast psychedelia.

Grandbrothers - Arctica

Grandbrothers are two men from Germany, one a jazz pianist, the other involved in synth construction who found a way to control every part of a grand piano, metal, wood and strings inclusive, via especially constructed electromechanical hammers controlled via laptop and associated gizmos to manipulate those sounds on debut album Dilation. It's much more interesting than it sounds, here like a Philip Glass suite looped and glitched in intriguing ways.

The School - Do I Love You?

Frank Wilson's Northern Soul stomper is famous for its rarity in original pressing form (obviously it's all over compilations these days), which makes the prospect of an female perspective answer song an intriguing one. The Cardiff multi-handed retro-pop classicists who headlined our Indiepop Alldayer back in March go for it in much the same timeless talc-on-the-Casino-floor style on the single from their third album Wasting Away And Wondering, due in September.

Twenty years of recommended listening

For no special reason, we decided to extend the 20-track year-specific Spotify playlists we put together to celebrate STN's tenth anniversary in April back another ten years. So, with those original compilations appended, presenting two decades of STN-approved music:

1995
1996 part one
1996 part two
1997
1998
1999
2000 part one
2000 part two
2001
2002
2003
2004

Ten Years Of STN (no artist replicated over these lists)

2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

Christian Fitness - The Harder It Hits

Christian Fitness, remember, is what Andrew Falkous does by himself (drums aside) between Future Of The Left albums. A second album, he says, is due within the next couple of weeks; in the meantime a song a subtle distance away from FOTL's usual load, featuring nasal falsetto vocals, shredded delay pedal guitars, disco percussion handclaps and a hook that you'd almost call commercial. Plus obtuse ire-filled lyrics, obviously.

Trust Fund - Dreams

A MJ-produced standalone single ahead of a prospective second album this year from Ellis and co, a slightly more streamlined and early-Weezer-in-a-cellar indebted sound sees Alanna McArdle sharing the vocal duties on a fun-sized charging summery pop belter laced with requisite undercurrent of self-doubt.

Haiku Salut - Hearts Not Parts

Derbyshire's rustic instrumental exploratory unit's second album Etch And Etch Deep, out 31st July, sounds like it's expanding their palette into more pastoral, mistier territory while still sounding like a runaway folk junkshop on wheels crashed into an electronics display. Setting off at a fair accordion-led lick it eventually settles into minimalist Mum-like territory where the interesting things going on around the edges make up for the airiness in the middle, before a refuelled charge that the press release fairly accurately describes as "drum'n'bass being played on an army of glockenspiels". There's even vocals, albeit ghostly background wails. The album's London launch, at the Lexington on 9th August with support from Owl & Mouse and Two White Cranes, seems like a bill and a half.

Recommended listening: 2000-2004

It's halfway through 2015, a time when other blogs are slinging together lists of the best stuff they've heard so far this year. So quickly, here's a non-comprehensive selection of artists whose albums of the last six months we've really enjoyed and admired. Girlpool, Grawl!x, Ralegh Long, Panda Bear, Lone Wolf, Trust Fund, Landshapes, Algiers, the Mountain Goats, Courtney Barnett, Marika Hackman, Summer Camp, SOAK, Lonelady, Nadine Shah, Tigercats.

That's that done. Now, do you remember back in April we celebrated STN's tenth anniversary with ten year-by-year 20-track Spotify playlists? Well, we enjoyed doing those, so we decided to carry on right back to the start of the century. So here for the half-year hell of it are selections for 2000-2004, two separate collections for 2000 as we couldn't bare to lose more than forty tracks from what was a bountiful year for such goodness. And yes, doubtless we'll do more of these for 20th century years in time. We're like that.

2000 part one
2000 part two
2001
2002
2003
2004

Swahili Blonde - Discover Aurora

LA's Nicole Turley's previous albums have included input from Viv Albertine, John Frusciante, Duran Duran's John Taylor and Devo's Alan Myers, which suggests a certain eclectic sense of adventure, but the Deities In Decline EP out July 21st is entirely performed by herself. Written as a song of personal inspiration for her goddaughter, it plants its flag initially in the world of early 80s processed electro-disco while wandering around picking up weeping strings, plaintive piano, occasional surging guitars and Afrobeat rhythms, eventually sounding not unlike Warpaint were they on Ze Records.

http://soundcloud.com/noisyghostpr/swahili-blonde-discover

Two White Cranes - So Much Water, So Close To Home

Roxy Brennan's spare up close and honest to a fault style made an itching, immediate impact on last year's sort of self-titled debut album proper. Since then she's been involved with what seems like endless guest appearances and sideperson recruitments - in fact she's just joined Joanna Gruesome - but a second solo album is on its way, Radisson Blue out 1st August. Its opening track is loosely inspired by a Raymond Carver short story of the same name and features a slightly scrappy fuller band backing seeming not unlike previous collaborator(s) Trust Fund to fill out a song about the power of words in fiction but beneath the surface also is about more personal longings.

Slum Of Legs - Doll Like

Not every band affecting the sort of DIY sound that sounds like a faux-mess that's going to fall apart with the slightest distraction pulls it off in a way that makes you want to listen to them more than once. Brighton post-post-feminist indie-noiseniks Slum Of Legs very much can, spending their second single, described as "a call to action... a fight for gender identity and acceptance", throwing everything from triumphant hollering chorales to wandering Velvetsy violin via twiddly messed up electronics at a wall of fuzz and pulling it off through absolute conviction and righteous defiance to an end. A full throttle live act, their next gig is with potential spirit animals, supporting the reformed Prolapse - note to any professional writers looking in, why aren't you covering the Prolapse reformation dates? - in Brighton on the 23rd.

Outblinker - Pink

When the "radio edit" is nearly five and a half minutes long you're on to something, and for once that thing is good in this case. Outblinker, made up from assorted Glaswegian noise, art-rock and DIY outfits, are presently working with Benjamin John Power of Fuck Buttons, and it's their sculpted fried electronic noise that comes to mind alongside spiralling kosmiche and the striding analogue keyboard armies of Holy Fuck. A very promising starting point.

Totem Terrors - Big E/Lies

Max and Rosie's second album of wiry (and sometimes Wire-y) distorto-post-punk Hard Science is out 29th June, picking up pretty much where their spare sonics left off, namely in a ditch - chanted duelling vocals, sinuous riffs that turn chaotic every so often, throbbing guttural basslines, industrial drum machine, nodding at Steve Albini, Swans, Pere Ubu and the Fall's three R's (repetition, repetition, repetition)

Girls Names - Reticence

Belfast's Girls Names have always been inclined towards the psychedelic and the damaged garage bands, but here they've veered towards what John Robb termed the Death To Trad Rock movement of the mid-80s, the movement that ran alongside C86 in indie circles of awkward, dirty post-post-punk noisemakers. While there's something of post-punk and pre-goth European iciness here too, it's all in the slashing, discordant guitar sounds over agitated rhythms, and it bodes very well for third album Arms Around A Vision when it's released in... October! The year's going too quickly.

C Duncan - Garden

Christopher Duncan's multitracked acoustic lushness continues to evolve and take on a full spectrum of pastel colours on this new single, which explodes into psychedelic life like few properly manage to pull off, replete with a guitar solo journeying into space at the end, while the harmonic Duncans underneath remain able to convey the emotions in simple fashion. Intricate without overcomplicating matters, it's brighter than most of what we've heard from him so far while conveying an undertow of doubt, a sunshine pop Mark Hollis in waiting. Recorded in his bedroom, it'll be fascinating to see how this works live supporting Admiral Fallow in June and then Belle & Sebastian at Somerset House come July, the month (17th) in which album Architect is released.

Man Of Moon - The Road

Teenage Edinburgh duo Man Of Moon have been touring with The Phantom Band recently, which is as good an entree as you'll have into their boldly standing-out statement of a debut single, a strutting, lightly shimmering, slowly enveloping slab of dark kosmiche produced by Frightened Rabbit keyboardist Andy Monaghan that strides forward where others get stuck in repetition.

AUTOBAHN - Immaterial Man

The death-motorik Leodensians have reached album stage, Dissemble out 21st August. They're a band who on this form know their touchstones, reaching out to the Horrors/Toy brigade on one side with the build and swirl and on the other the point at which the Batcave meets Factory - the bass sound and gothy vocal reverb are pure Martin Hannett touches. Developing from pensive to full throttle, they're post-industrial in more ways that one.