ifitbeyourwill Podcast #211 • Gem Club

A life shaped by piano, repetition and the pulse of electronic music. Christopher Barnes talks about the long road to Gem Club, the spaces between records, and the quiet architecture of Emerald Press. Twelve years on, the music finds its way back.

https://iamgemclub.com/

Convinced Friend • Robitussin • 2026

convincedfriend.com

“The band captures a swampy, heat-drenched collective chemistry, managing to sound shaggy and loose while careening along the track’s winding grooves.” - Under the Radar

 

“An intimacy underlined by a certain sense of disbelief” - Various Small Flames

 

“... An introspective folk record with balls, sort of like if Pedro the Lion pushed ‘Control’ even further, or maybe like Good Looks, more recently.” - Austin Town Hall

 

“blown-out folksy rock" - Post Trash

 

"Austin Wilson might be Providence based, but he hasn’t forgotten his roots in Houma, Louisiana and the people he grew up alongside, the people he left behind.” - Americana UK

Charlie Ivan Band • 'Of Nothing’ • 2026

 

At its core, Of Nothing is an album concerned with beauty found inside bleakness. Throughout the record, Ivan returns to recurring themes of longing, love, desperation and the strange futility that shadows everyday existence. It also represents a continuation of a lifelong relationship with songwriting. Ivan credits his mother, who is a songwriter herself, with introducing him to guitar and piano, and the music of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Sinéad O'Connor, Radiohead and Nick Cave, at an early age.

ifitbeyourwill Podcast #185 • Knife in the Water

Some records don't age—they deepen. Nearly thirty years after Knife in the Water quietly reshaped the edges of alt-country and slowcore, Aaron Blount joins ifitbeyourwill to revisit the landscapes that first inspired the band and the memories that still echo through its songs. It's a conversation about Austin before it changed, music that refuses easy categories, and the strange privilege of watching old songs find new lives in new listeners.

https://www.knifeinthewater.net/

Knife In The Water • Plays More Than One And Others • 2026

knifeinthewater.net

Bedhead, American Analog Set, and other Texans set into motion a Lone Star branch of a national movement led by Galaxie 500, Codeine, and Low that utilized negative space in sound and songwriting. AC

villagerrr • ‘Carousel’ • 2026

“For years, villagerrr was Columbus, Ohio’s best‑kept secret…on ‘Carousel,’ Scott’s fifth album as villagerrr, he watches his future take shape as his music reaches places he never imagined it would.” —The Line of Best Fit

“A lovely, bucolic take on slowcore” —Stereogum

“Scott dropped his guard and opened villagerrr up to outside influence more than ever before, with an enviable list of friends and collaborators joining to elevate Carousel into the project’s richest sound to date.” —Various Small Flames

“There’s definitely a wayward twang on the horizon…those gentle vocal tones don’t hurt me one bit either, so I’m all on board as we look to ‘Carousel’ hitting in May” —Austin Town Hall

https://lnk.to/villagerrr-carousel

SOME FEAR • “DIA” • 2026

 

With their sophomore album, Word Eater, Some Fear moves toward a more deliberate and polished production style. While their previous work established their lo fi foundations, this record explores greater sonic density and a shift toward a higher fidelity sound.

Cindy • ‘Procession’ • 2026

Another Country is the fifth full-length album by Cindy, the San Francisco-based group built around the songwriting of Karina Gill. Recorded, like all of its predecessors, in their hometown and for the first time with a consistent line-up held over from their previous record (the Swan Lake EP from 2024), and is replete with the poetry of private vistas, eavesdropped dramas and confusing winds

https://linktr.ee/Cindy.AnotherCountry

ifitbeyourwill S06E28 • link3

 

Quiet can hit harder than loud when the songs leave space to breathe. For link3—the duo of James and sunniva—that principle wasn't an aesthetic choice so much as a necessity. Their debut, On The Outline, emerged from bedroom studios, repurposed equipment, and a shared conviction that releasing imperfect work beats hoarding it indefinitely. The result is a slowcore record that trades polish for proximity, and listeners are responding in kind: instrumentals scored to wedding aisles, fan-made recreations, unsolicited messages about memory and tenderness.

James writes guitar-first, melodies arriving before lyrics, arrangements built on restraint rather than density. Sunniva's vocals—shaped by years of imitating favorite artists until her own tone surfaced—lock into his with an ease that belies the duo's origins as an online connection. They met through happenstance, bonded over a late-blooming obsession with albums as cohesive objects, and committed to a DIY ethos that prioritized momentum over perfectionism. The bathroom fan hum on early demos? Part of the texture now.

The pair attributes much of their sound to taste as a curatorial tool—knowing what to leave out, when to stop tweaking, how restraint can magnify emotion. Acoustic hush meets gently produced textures; male-female harmonies circle each other without crowding. It's the kind of record that rewards patient listening, and its intimacy has found an audience hungry for exactly that.

Now they're eyeing Montreal studios and string players, hoping to carry their quiet core into higher fidelity without sacrificing the living-room warmth that made On The Outline work. Violin lines floating over guitar, a producer who respects silence, slowcore sensibilities with broader reach. The blueprint is there. Whether they can scale up without smoothing over the rough edges that made them compelling in the first place—that's the open question. For now, the bedroom recordings are doing the work.

Instagram

link3 • On the Outline • 2026

Seko • Say Hi to the Sun • 2026

https://www.instagram.com/seko.band/

best of 2025 • Teethe • Magic Of The Sale

Teethe re-emerges with Magic Of The Sale, a soft but steelyfull-length album where the Texas band's four distinctsongwriters, singers, and artists ask a series of interlockedquestions about what it means to build a life in a time of sharedcollapse. The result is a sad and beautiful self-built world ofSouthern slowcore, where four people turn toward one anotherand drift forward, together. dead dog

best of 2025 • Alan Sparhawk With Trampled by Turtles • Not Broken

Grief doesn’t always sound loud. Sometimes it hums quietly in songs like “Not Broken,” from With Trampled by Turtles. Alan Sparhawk’s voice, joined by the band’s warm strings carries both pain and peace. It’s not a song about falling apart — it’s about holding on, finding calm in loss, and remembering love without anger. “Not Broken” feels like a moment of healing — simple, tender, and deeply human.

orchid mantis • In Airports • 2025

I think a lot of people live their life in airports. Stuck, waiting for something just over the horizon. Travelers come into their life, and leave when the time is right, but they just keep waiting. I've had a lot of conversations recently about agency and preserving your passions. About not letting yourself drift. Living with a purpose, and avoiding that sense of complacency that creeps in as you age. There's so much we can't control. So much so that it can blind us to how easily we could change. Tomorrow, you could catch that flight. You could go anywhere. You could be a new person. You could leave the airport.

ifitbeyourwill S06E09 • Living Hour

The first spark was private: long walks, headphones on, and albums that asked for total attention. From there, Living Hour grew into a band that treats dynamics like storytelling—opening with noise that dissolves into hush, letting melodies carry both weight and warmth, and trusting listeners to lean in. We sit down with Sam and Gil to trace the arc from university jams in Winnipeg’s DIY rooms to a studio session that captured the bold confidence of Internal Drone Infinity, their new record dropping October 17.

We unpack how ambient influences—Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, and the Social Network score—shaped a patient, spacious approach to songwriting. Sam explains how ideas begin as fragments and vowel sounds, how a riff earns its place by refusing to fade, and how lyrics stepped forward across albums until the new songs felt fully owned. Gil maps the shift from guitar‑forward interplay to arrangements built around Sam’s melodies, and what happens when a new drummer changes the band’s gait in the best way. Touring comes to life here too: the van routines, modular setlists that fit quiet rooms and rock clubs, and the small onstage transitions that make the show breathe.

You’ll hear why release season feels like nesting and training, how social media becomes part amplifier, part chore, and why November’s run is designed like a marathon. We also look ahead: February dates on the West Coast, hopes for Europe and Australia, and a folder of demos that might become an EP. Sam’s ambient side project, Pure Pulp, threads back to the beginning—proof that the private room where songs start remains the core of the band’s voice. If you love indie rock steeped in ambient textures, slow‑core dynamics, and heartfelt vocals, this conversation will lock you in. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs new music, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.

livinghourband.com

On Internal Drone Infinity, Winnipeg’s Living Hour transforms the passage of time into something both urgent and sacred. Anchored by Sam Sarty’s vivid lyricism, shaped by years as a projectionist conjuring stories in a dark theater, the band explores the quiet magic hidden in everyday life. Their fourth album drifts between dreamy noise rock, folky slowcore, and fuzzy indie-pop, coining a genre all their own:“yearn-core.”With wistful vocals, textural distortion, and poetic detail, Living Hour capture the ache of memory, the mess of feeling, and the beauty in what remains.

ifitbeyourwill S06E06 • Shallowater

A quiet room. Three players. More air than distortion—and somehow it feels heavier. We invited Blake Skipper from Shallowater to pull back the curtain on a second album that trades pedal stacks for patience, lets the drummer steer dynamics, and turns the bass into a melodic foil that fills the trio without clogging the mix. If you’ve ever wondered how slow/fast shifts can feel cinematic, or how minimal gear can still shake a room, this one lands right in your wheelhouse.

We trace the band’s path from Lubbock House shows to an independent release that knows what it wants: space, restraint, and intent. Blake breaks down how songs form in the room, why lyrics usually arrive last, and how a well-timed TikTok plus an Ethel Kane playlist slot helped the music find its people. There’s candour about the DIY grind—distribution, merch, schedules—alongside the pure joy of first tours, late-night drives, and fans who cross state lines for 45 minutes of slowcore catharsis. Expect talk of odd-time grooves, drummer-led accelerations, and the subtle choices that make quiet passages tense and loud moments bloom.

We also explore how reviews reflect the band’s bet: some call it sparse, others call it necessary. That’s the point. When you remove the extra, the melody has to carry, the timing has to mean something, and each player has to leave room for the others. Blake shares what’s ahead—new writing, deeper interplay, and dates with The Raveonettes across Chicago, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, and DC—plus a hope to bring their “dirtgaze” north to Canada. If you care about slowcore, alt-gaze, Texas indie, or simply how a small band can sound big through intention, queue it up, lean in, and let the space do the talking.

villagerrr • Neverrr Everrr (feat. Merce Lemon) • 2025

https://www.villagerrr.com/

As villagerrr, Mark Allen Scott’s patient songs are mesmerizing and unmistakably Midwestern. The prolific Ohio artist thrives on pinpointing quiet, mundane moments and imbuing them with disarming emotional clarity. 

Teethe • Push You Forever • 2025

order

Today Teethe share “Push You Forever,” the final single from their lush new record Magic Of The Sale. On the new track, pedal steel sighs beneath honeyed vocals and drifting drums; it’s a hangdog hymn about being caught in the illusions we create about our past and present. The track arrives with an equally beautiful animated video by Rosa Sawyers. The full record arrives on August 8th and is now available to pre-order on Purple Dusk vinyl, cassette tape, and CD.

NYXY NYX • in haze • 2025

INSTAGRAM

“Slow, tender, and airy… staggeringly good.”

- STEREOGUM

“Mind-melting”

- SPIN 

“Nyxy Nyx’s music strikes on a personal level few artists hit.”

- POST-TRASH

“Dense and richly textured, but with a sense of weightlessness in its use of open space and shimmering guitar tones… Nyxy Nyx are it; let these songs get under your skin.”

- TREBLE ZINE

“Haunting beauty and lo-fi, sonic palette is coupled with sometimes heartachingly beautiful lyrics.”

- NEW NOISE MAGAZINE 

Hiding Places, trust blinks., Tombstone Poetry Split x3 • 2025

Website 

"Very rarely do you find a band that, while new in the scheme of time, simultaneously sparks a feeling of fond and reverted sense of comfort; the kind you get when returning to the bands that were accomplices through milestones and memories."
-Post Trash

“Since forming, the band has cultivated and perfected a unique blend of hushed folk melodies along with the crushing subtlety of Elephant 6 style production […] taking a cult classic poise amongst the most taught folk knots and rock n’ roll softies alike.”
-Ugly Hug