Indie Basement (12/5): the week in classic indie, alternative & college rock

Welcome to December and what will probably be the last regular Indie Basement of the year. New releases dry up — there’s not much this week — and list season will begin soon so stay tuned for that. Until then here’s a mix of two new albums (Melody’s Echo Chamber, TEED), a fantastic Baxter Dury remix EP featuring Jarvis Cocker, DJ Parrot and Marie Davidson, and two catch-up reviews of records I didn’t write about at the time of release (Ribbon Skirt, Litronix), plus a look back at The Housemartins‘ perfect debut album for his week’s Indie Basement Classic.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew gives the latest from redveil, HAYWARDxDÄLEK – HAYWARDxDÄLEK (This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and MC dälek) and more a spin.

You can play catch-up on November here.

We’ll keep the intro short as the days are currently. Head below for this week’s reviews.

Melody’s Echo Chamber – Unclouded (Domino)
Melody Prochet gets a new band but keeps her old sound in her appealing fifth album

Thirteen years and five albums into her career as Melody’s Echo Chamber, Melody Prochet has settled into a pleasing groove, making lithe, jazzy, effervescent psychedelia with an insanely talented group of musicians that includes Dungen’s Reine Fiske. Apart from Fiske, though, Unclouded features a new backing band led by producer Sven Wunder and featuring incredible Heliocentrics bandleader Malcolm Catto (Madlib, DJ Shadow) on drums, Daniel Ögen and Love Orsan of Swedish dreampop outfit Dina Ögon on guitar and bass, and gossamer string arrangements by Josefin Runsteen. She continues to make some of the best-sounding records within the psych genre, and the album is worth hearing just for the rhythm section alone, but everyone here brings their A-game.

If Unclouded isn’t as inventive or challenging as 2018’s amazing Bon Voyage, songs like “Childhood Dream,” “Eyes Closed,” and the very sunny “Daisy” (which features El Michels Affair’s Leon Michels) are a lightly trippy delight that goes down smooth. Don’t fix what ain’t broke, I guess.

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Baxter Dury – Allbarone Remixes (Heavenly)
Jarvis, Parrot, and Marie Davidson take Allbarone to the dancefloor on this essential remix EP

Baxter Dury’s great new album Allbarone — one of my favorites of the year — takes him into full-on dance territory with an emphasis on French Touch–style disco. So it makes sense that he’d commission remixes, and this EP features two by Indie Basement regulars that are absolutely killer. Parrot & Cocker Too — Richard Barratt (DJ Parrot / Crooked Man) and Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, who worked their magic on Baxter’s “Miami” back in 2017 — take “Allbarone” into thunderous techno-house territory, turning it into an absolute stormer. Parrot did similar work on Róisín Murphy’s 2020 album Róisín Machine.

Then there’s Montreal’s Marie Davidson (maker of another of 2025’s best), who transforms “Schadenfreude” from swirling disco into a minimal, icy club jam that makes even better use of singer Fabienne Debarre’s French whisper — and even includes a second verse from her that wasn’t used in the original song. I’m going to say it: this is better than the original. Rounding out the EP is an instrumental of Davidson’s remix that’s excellent in its own right. I can only hope there are still more remixes to come.

FOR MORE: Listen to my conversation with Baxter on our BV Interviews podcast.

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Ribbon Skirt – Bite Down (Mint Music)
Polaris prize-nominated debut from this Montreal duo shouldn’t be missed

Two weeks ago was the 2025 M for Montreal Festival, which was also celebrating its 20th anniversary. BrooklynVegan has been attending since 2008, and this year we had an official showcase on the festival’s opening night that included Montreal duo Ribbon Skirt, whose debut album Bite Down was released back in April and was nominated for this year’s Polaris Music Prize.

On it, Tashiina Buswa and Billy Riley — who previously recorded together as Love Language (the name was already taken) — craft clever, compelling indie rock that swings between soaring and sludgy, tender and tense. Their songs have roots in the ’90s but the production and arrangements feel entirely modern, with layers upon layers of hooks and melody. The not-so-secret weapon here is Tashiina’s voice, which can go from sultry to snarl to shriek depending on what the song needs, making for a meaty, deeply satisfying record.

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Litronix – One A Day Keeps The Doctor Away (Invada)
Geoff Barrow gives Kevin Litrow’s theatrical solo project a dose of Vitamin G

Kevin Litrow, who spent much of the 2000s as one half of LA duo Dance Disaster Movement, makes music these days as Litronix, a one-man-band affair that dabbles in everything from synthpop to lounge to early rock ’n’ roll. You may have seen him opening for Beak> on their last two North American tours, and now Litronix are signed to Invada Records, the label run by Geoff Barrow, who until recently was Beak>’s singing drummer (and one-third of Portishead). Barrow produced One a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, the third Litronix album, and it’s a very good time — just weird enough to keep listeners on their toes.

This is by far the most fully realized Litronix album to date, managing to bottle Litrow’s theatrical stage presence — part Devo, part sweaty Pentecostal preacher — into great recordings and production. Every song’s an anthem of sorts with a belt-it-out chorus, and the music rises to meet his voice as synthesizers and guitars engulf you in near-immersive sound. Making this more of a concept record to go with its title and artwork, the “real” songs are interspersed with jingles for various daily supplements (Vitamin X, Vitamin O), forming an optimal sonic supplement to your musical diet.

Litronix also just released an awesome Beak> remix of album standout “Bus Stop” which steers it into 1980 synthwave territory:

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TEED – Always With Me (Nice Age)
No more dinosaurs: TEED leans into atmosphere over bangers on his third album

It took 15 years, but Orlando Higginbottom got tired of writing and saying his nom-de-dance, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, and officially changed his name to its acronym, TEED, which most people were using exclusively already. What hasn’t changed is Higginbottom’s elegant brand of dance music, which remains airy, sophisticated, and dreamy. He’s not aiming for bangers with Always With Me — though “The Echo” and the title track come close — but an atmospheric vibe where his vocals are as smooth as everything else on this swaying, appealing album. It’s better suited for a midnight drive down the coast during a full moon than a sweaty club.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: The Housemartins – London 0, Hull 4 (Go! Discs, 1986)
The Housemartins’ wonderfully jangly and thoughtful debut album holds up remarkably well

In the mid-’80s there was a bumper crop of jangly British guitar bands who sprung up in The Smiths’ wake. One of the best was The Housemartins, from Hull in West Yorkshire, who may have been some Smiths fans’ second-favorite band in 1986 thanks to their unbelievably catchy choruses and a jaunty vibe cut with biting humor and sharp social commentary. (They also counted a pre–Fatboy Slim Norman Cook as their bassist.) Many people still treat Top 10 UK hit “Happy Hour” as a pub anthem, but the lyrics show a clear disdain for homogenous British culture: “It’s happy hour again / I think I might be happy if I wasn’t out with them.” With a video as goofy and fun as the one for “Happy Hour,” the confusion is understandable.

“Happy Hour” appeared on The Housemartins’ debut album, London 0 Hull 4, which proclaimed on the cover “16 songs — 17 hits!” and whose title made their disdain for the nation’s capital very clear. While there are plenty of strummy, sardonic earworms (“Sheep,” “Sitting on a Fence,” “We’re Not Deep”), the album also showcased their love of doo-wop and gospel, which set them apart. You can hear that side on the anti-nationalist anthem “Flag Day,” the melancholic “Think for a Minute,” their a cappella cover of “People Get Ready” and “Lean on Me” (which was not a cover).

London 0 Hull 4 is a perfect album: tuneful, smart, funny, thoughtful, and varied, with production that avoided most ’80s rock clichés, helping it remain as evergreen as its equally classic (and copied) cover art.