Comes off like a modern version of the 80s band, Black Sun Ensemble, and becomes enmeshed with other purveyors of loud, droning psych in my mind.

This is not paint by numbers paisley psych, rather, it hovers at the edges of Kraut rock and has a somewhat Motorik feel in some passages.

Imagine The Sisters of Mercy crossed with The Cure and any other favorite post punk group, including even lesser known lights of the scene such as early Comsat Angels and you start to get an inkling of what to expect here.

Their smooth, deceptively minimalist and vintage sound is enticing.

A Long Beach dark wave project that has religiously studied the 80s post punk playbook, and they mine it marvellously.

Nightmare music for a creepy sci-fi flick, replete with insectoid synth bleats, heavy keyboard washes, and insanely fast drumming. Chilly and slick, it will slide constrictor like and annihilate you

Dark and grungy, the perfect soundtrack to your haunted headspace.

This Melbourne group is no run of the mill shoegaze band. In fact, they have plenty of sonic tricks up their sleeve, and offer up a delectable palette of dream pop, shoegaze, and post punk.

Echodrone is back with a gorgeous new album, a dreamscape if ever one existed. Sonic sunlight streams through the cracks in your consciousness and peels back the dark edges as this song suite unfurls. This is joyful and even triumphant music, not something that will drag you deep into the gloom.

This is an album that will appeal to existing DLE fans and may draw in new listeners who know about the band but may not have checked them out in the past.

It morphs into swirling dream pop with warm rushes of organ and pretty harmonies. It’s got a very late 60s, early 70s feel to it, one that is welcome when all the radio ever plays is bombastic hard rock of the worst sort.

They make it all seem effortless, but these lovely confections were carefully crafted and lovingly produced. It all comes down to a love of music, and this emanates from the grooves of this record.

It’s a bouncy album of bright, retro sounding synth pop and new wave. It reflects Frankie’s interest in old sci-fi movies and soundtracks that use silly synths.

This music is dense and it is delicate, icy musical layers are frosty yet gorgeous as they work their magic on you. Even as the darkness swirls around you, glimmers of light dance just out of reach.

The single ‘Lucid I Would Dream’ is a soft, contemplative piece that inhabits the same space that Suzanne Vega once did back in the 80s. Miranda Lee has such a lyrical, expressive voice that shades these tunes like a gentle rain.

The KVB spin a variant of dreamy synth pop meshed with post punk that I find very appealing. Perhaps it’s the mysterious way they have about them, or the way their tunes hang out in a fog-shrouded part of my brain, one especially designed to receive and delight in this music.

The group invested ample time on this release, expanding their range both musically and lyrically. It’s a true collaboration between Payseur and bandmates Jack Doyle Smith and Tommy Davidson. The new songs reveal a more fluid, eclectic sound, filled with lush compositions formed by studio experiments. The album contains more complex instrumentation, including string arrangements, piano, harpsichord, flute, and saxophone.

While Clustersun is known primarily as shoegazers, their sound has evolved to include elements of post punk, noise pop, and mind-bending psych. The sound is more up front aggressive and hard charging, and it suits them well.

These new songs differ from previous howling acid rock and instead focus on dreamier elements.

The music reflects the hidden energies of rain clouds and sunshine and the deep creep of Northwest forests along with their effect on the psyche, inspired by the occult and esoteric literature of Mary Anne Atwood, Aleister Crowley, Colin Wilson, and Manly P. Hall.

Call it post punk with a psych edge, and the biting snarl of punk is never far from the surface.