Future Teens – Adjust Failure (single)

Featuring release art by Wyatt Campbell, son of The Wonder Years’ Dan Campbell, Future Teens return in all of their Bummer Pop glory for Yet Another Indie Banger. I say this like I’ve written anything about them before, but it’s my first semester with KRUI! Give me a break. These guys are True Indie Legends and deserve roughly twelve billion times more flowers than they’ve received. It’s a super solid indie anthem with creamy vocals and a whole lot of angst. Daniel, usually secondary vocals, shines on this track, and Amy’s backing shouts are Superb – Give it a listen, and if you don’t like it you’re wrong! (not really :p but I Love It).

–Daniel Lawless

Madison Cunningham – Ace

My favorite album of October is Ace by Madison Cunningham. The album looks into the complexity of relationships; what makes us stay when we should leave, dealing with residing feelings, and how relationships can make us lose parts of ourselves, along with many other complicated truths within romantic relationships. The sound of the album is also beautiful, with a variety of string instruments, woodwinds, acoustic and electric guitars, piano, and various percussion instruments that bring out a peaceful tone that contrasts with the melancholic nature of the lyrics. When I first listened to it, the album reminded me of a spring day where the sun is shining and the snow has melted. Some standout tracks are “Shatter Into Form I” and “Shatter Into Form II” which are instrumental intros for the first and second parts of the album that sets the tone and really pushes the overall sound of the album. Along with those there are many other amazing songs on this album. “Mummy”–which is my personal favorite song from the album–is a song with devastating lyrics about how cycles can repeat and how our upbringings can change us, but the message can be hidden behind its wistful tone. “Break The Jaw” is about relying on someone and how they can let you down, and how it can affect a bond long term. What I noticed most about the song was its abrupt change in tone. It became more upbeat and almost angry. On the second half of the album the song that stood out the most to me was “My Full Name”. It’s a song about being seen and how you change parts of yourself to be seen and loved by those around you. Overall I think that Ace is an amazing edition to the indie folk genre.

–Will Clair

MOBO Presents: The Perfect Cast LP feat. Modern Baseball (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition)

A rerelease of their 2015 EP The Perfect Cast, Modern Baseball sort-of-kind-of (not really) return with more meat (demos and live recordings) on MOBO Presents: The Perfect Cast LP feat. Modern Baseball (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition). While not a sign of their return, in my opinion, more recordings are really all that a MOBO fan can ask for these days. These are good ones! If you already like Modern Baseball (who doesn’t?) then you’ll like this. Give it a listen!

–Daniel Lawless

Appreciate your Iowa heritage and engage in some more (Philadelphian) Midwest emo. I stole the original The Perfect Cast CD from my older sister when I was in middle school (she had it coming she got to see them at Gabe’s for the 2015 Mobo-PUP-Jeff-TMP tour) and life was never the same, mostly for the worse. Having this album released again in 2025 is like being sent back to high school in the most despicable/cathartic way. It’s the same EP, with additions of live recordings and alternate cuts of the original. It’s as whiny and heart breaking as it ever was, a sonic impulse to slam PBRs and chain smoke in a plastic lawn chair. It’s not a return, not even a reunion, but a fucked up reminder excavating the worst versions of ourselves that we buried six feet underground a decade ago. Much love and hate for it.

–Pauly

The Hellp – Doppler (single)

The Hellp‘s new single Doppler was my personal favorite of October. The opening acoustic guitar is a beautiful new addition to their instrument lineup, and an added focus on guitar for the band would be a great addition, and Noah Dillons vocals have been the best they have ever been on this track. The instrumental is a departure from past songs like “Caustic”, being only a drum line, a synth pad, and occasional arps, Vox stabs and piano notes. The progressive building of intensity gives movements and emotion to when a new verse is introduced. If LL was LCD Soundsystem, Riviera is Crystal Castles.

I first found The Hellp on 4chan in 2021. On a forum about interesting upcoming musicians an anonymous user posted a link to the music video for “Tu Tu Neurotic”, a song from their 2018 album Curtis. The title of “The only band out right now that matters” has followed the band for years and it’s been proven more and more true. I have been following The Hellp since the release of the EP Enemy in 2021 and I’ve seen them grow into the cultural phenomenon that they were destined to be. They have single handedly grown a new American youth revolution underground (and they even brought back skinny jeans). When I think of tip of the spear, vanguard music and youth culture I think of The Hellp. Something so new and honest is such a breath of fresh air from the past ten years of Pitchfork certified, sanitized, safe for the mainstream indie culture. This is what being years ahead looks like.

After an amazing 2024 run, the duo’s next project, riviera, has the chance to finally push the band into the mainstream, or to loose their momentum to the artists that they have inspired such as Snow Strippers (the Detroit based duo who’s song “Under your spell” gained worldwide attention last summer) or 2hollis (another LA based artist with 4.6M monthly listeners on Spotify). LL, Dillon and Lucy’s last release and the following tour brought a massive wave of interest due to the intensity and danceability, with every song having an ear worm hook. What concerns me is the massive departure from the energy of LL with the Riviera singles. “Country Road”, “Doppler”, and “Here I am” are slower and spacier, and more blue. Judging this upcoming album by its singles, this could make or break The Hellp, but we all will still be listening this November.

–Bodhi Brent

Peel Dream Magazine – Taurus

Taurus is a dreamy yet jangly, soft, and short (only eight songs, with the shortest clocking in at just 1:29) album from Peel Dream Magazine. While these songs may be seen as rejections from their 2024 album, Rose Main Reading Room, discarded and packaged together for a quick follow up, they stand on their own and bring a fuller, different vision to the whole.

“Venus in Nadir,” the lead and only single off the album thus far, starts the album off with a jaunt, quick-paced and beating; it’s a song that feels like the fall sun, warm and hopeful through the chilly air. “Taurus,” the namesake of the album, has the specter of Sufjan Stevens floating all around it in the best way. Other standouts include “The Band From Northampton,” another fall-campus-walking-hope-seeking tune with a driving drum beat and a twee spirit, and “Seek and Destroy,” a Stereolab-infused dream-pop song that softly states: “I found a secret in the grass/Out on my ass/Seek and destroy.” “Down From the Trees” is an experimental sample from a lecture on monkeys with dreamy, experimental chimes playing all around it, asking the question we all wonder: are we human, or are we monkeys? While the lyrics to each song are soft-spoken and subtle, they mix with the dreamscape created by Peel Dream Magazine to take you away as you lay in the fading fall sun with the leaves swirling ‘round.

–Corrine Jones

Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition

Coming on the heels of the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”, based on the Warren Zanes novel, The Boss rereleased a elaborate collection of tunes to make up this 2025 version of his 1982 record. The original album “Nebraska” released after a trilogy of commercial successes. With arena rock hits, transcendent choruses, and iconic saxophone solos via Clarence Clemons, Bruce found himself lost in the sound while in Colt’s Neck, New Jersey wanting to strip it all down with an acoustic guitar. Recording tracks that would make up “Nebraska” and “Born in the USA”, Springsteen gives us demo’s, outtakes, and a long awaited electric version of these songs that comprise “Nebraska”.

This record has always moved me, a concept album of sorts about the helpless living in America. The dreary outlook this album carries is still there on the live version of these songs, recorded just north of Asbury Park in Red Bank, New Jersey on April 22nd, 2025. The 76 year old provides his raspy voice to add an extra layer of desolate feeling to the live version of this album. The harmonica floats atop the acoustic guitar, the subtle mandolin harmonizes, and the greatest rock star ever bellows out these poems that sit in your heart and mind. “Johnny 99” is about a mentally ill man who loses his job, shoots a night clerk, and is served “98 and a year” in prison. There are lessons in these songs, but let’s focus in on “Johnny 99”. The closing of union jobs and their effect on the economy as he wails that “they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month”, and “the bank was holding my mortgage, they were gonna take my house away”. The mental effect of a dead economy on an abounded town is brought up as well singing “I ain’t saying that makes me an innocent man, but it was more than all this judge, that put that gun in my hand”. Another lesson is the lack of care provided to those who need it as Johnny threatens to “blow his top” in the middle of the street before the police arrest him. I could write an essay on each song on this record and the impact it has. There is little that The Boss shy’s away from in the harsh reality that many face. The electric version was well worth the wait, boasting E Street legends Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Steven Van Zandt, and Max Weinberg all at home on their respective instruments. The full album bounces with an energy that puts you more in mind of a classic Springsteen project, providing new life and energy to these often grim tracks. I enjoy it as a change of pace, and it delivers what you would expect from an expanded studio Springsteen record. I love the live versions of songs off this record such as “Atlantic City”, where the horn section plays the harmonica line and Bruce plays his butterscotch blonde Fender Telecaster instead of an acoustic. The electric version does not reach these live album heights, but I still enjoy its sound.

The sound is great on all the records, and the storytelling holds up. “Nebraska” is one of the greatest records in my collection. There is little The Boss can’t do, and an acoustic folk album is definitely not on the list. Holding within a demo of the hit “Born In the U.S.A.”, B-Side favorite “Pink Cadillac” which was opposite on the 45 of “Dancing In the Dark”, and much more, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition” was a journey that I loved every second of. There is so much to explore between the outtakes, electric version, and live version, it has been on constant rotation in the days since it has released.

–Logan Melia

PinkPantheress – Fancy Some More?

Wait what do you mean Bladee feature on the Pinkpantheress remix album?? Dreams–perchance–truly can come true. Following this year’s earlier hit release Fancy That, the awaited remix compilation Fancy Some More? released early October, right before her limited but massively popular U.S. tour. It’s a collection of remixes ranging from jungle, alt-pop, techno, k-pop, and Kylie Minogue. She’s built her international army of Brits, Koreans, Swedes, & Brazilians, all united in the name of Pink. There’s some hits and misses stacked between each other, regrettably I must inform that some of them are boring. Pink’s strength is her contemporary pop diversity, how she can pull from samples and her international influences and bring it into her maximalist girl-world of Cockney aesthetics and create hit after hit. Standout remixes here completely reimagine the original song, where it becomes an entirely new track and interpretation of Fancy That, and make clear just how inspired her overall music style is, where influence and aesthetic merge into the one and only Pink.

–Pauly

The post KRUI Staff Picks: Best Releases of October appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The man behind the band moniker, Joe Stevens—tends to have a rotating cast of musicians filling out the group—brought on drummer Brian Alvarez and dual bassists and vocalists Harmony Index and Marina Aguerre and they melted seamlessly into the sonic landscape of Peel Dream Magazine. 

Much of the performance centered around creating atmospheric dream-pop of breezy drumbeats and heavy 90s-influenced synth, which was cut with a certain lightness and effortlessness from the use of dual male-female harmonies. Harmonies during the set were less lyric-driven and more dependent on instrumentation to complete the sonic soundscape in a perfect, deeply vibey blend. Sometimes the singing transformed into perfectly timed and beautiful, rhythmic vocal beats.

Even with the influence of heavier college rock in the performance’s drowsy synth, there was also a playful whimsy to the band’s percussion that broke through the wall of glittering keyboard and bass lines. Peak whimsy hit whenever Stevens would break out staccato notes on the keyboard in the midst of steady sound, reminiscent of an ice cream truck jingle—crisp and delicious. 

Currently on tour with fellow Mission Creek performer Soccer Mommy, Peel Dream Magazine filled the festival’s smallest venue with warmth fit for a space triple the size. The biggest rush of every song was once the guitar and drum melodies delivered their final notes and Stevens remained, holding the final chords on the keyboard. With the haunting remnants of the last song’s essence still hanging in the air, Stevens stood like a solemn organist, basking in drawn-out chords. 

The lasting echoes and vibrations made each performance, from the bouncy, sunny synth tracks to the gloomy grunge pieces, linger with the audience and created a sonic experience of a rolling atmosphere, rather than a set of bite-sized tracks. This choice greatly aided the compact set-length and intimate setting of Trumpet Blossom. The concert setting itself and the laidback style of Peel Dream Magazine’s performance set the show apart from the majority of Mission Creek, feeling more like a jam session with old friends. 

With little time to talk between tracks, the audience got the best sense of the band as they stood in the audience supporting and watching the rest of the afternoon’s sets. Their spirit of camaraderie made it clear—everyone was just happy to be there. 

The post Peel Dream Magazine floods Trumpet Blossom with synth escapism at Mission Creek appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Two albums deep, the band began as the solo project of Joe Stevens, self-released and recorded in his apartment. Once Stevens signed with a label off of the success of his debut Modern Meta Physic, Stevens brought in a fuller band lineup for the 2020 release Agitprop Alterna. Instrumentalist Kelly Winrich, vocalist Jo-Anne Hyun, and drummer Brian Alvarez fill out the lineup. 

The recent release 2021 Moral Panics continues the additions of Agitprop Alterna—the dual male and female vocals call to mind The Pixies or The Magnetic Fields, fused with the soundscapes of Ultravox and The Cocteau Twins. Peel Dream Magazine’s music invites the listener to take a trip through sunny synth and intimate drum machine beats. Currently touring with fellow Mission Creek artist, Soccer Mommy, Peel Dream Machine offers retro sounds that fit in well with the heyday of 90s college rock—fitting with the band name’s homage to BBC Radio DJ and indie music promoter John Peel.

Peel Dream Magazine will perform April 9th at Trumpet Blossom Cafe as a part of Mission Creek Festival.

The post Mission Creek Preview: Peel Dream Magazine dreamily lands in Iowa City appeared first on KRUI Radio.