Hi friends,

The Onion recently warned that scientists believe we may soon be running out of retro. Considering how quickly nostalgia cycles are shrinking, it doesn’t feel entirely far-fetched.

We’re deep into the 2020s, yet the decade still feels harder to pin to one defining musical movement. At the same time, we keep circling back faster: shoegaze, early-2000s indie rock, and now the collision of bloghouse, electroclash, and indie rock that has been gathered under the name “indie sleaze.”

A few weeks ago, KCRW DJ Olive Kimoto devoted her show to that era. But her piece below gets at something more interesting than whether skinny jeans are back: what exactly are we nostalgic for?

–Ale

Here's Olive:

You pull up to the function you heard about on Myspace, donning your American Apparel tank and painted-on jeans. Your legs are constricted, your collarbones already glistening from a crowd that is almost certainly a fire hazard. Some guy approaches you and takes your photo with the brightest flash known to man. You see stars. I guess he goes by The Cobrasnake, or something? You feel impossibly fabulous and unraveled at the same time.

Welcome to 2006, where both skinny jeans and whatever you want to call it — bloghouse, electroclash, indie sleaze — are really taking flight.

Of course, nobody at the time was calling it “indie sleaze.” That name came much later, an attempt to put a frame around a particularly sweaty, overexposed moment when indie rock and club music crashed headfirst into each other. (Cue A-Trak’s remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll.”) Guitars mingled with distorted synths. Rock bands were remixed for dance floors. DJs played bands. Bands wanted to sound like DJs. Nobody seemed particularly concerned with deciding where one genre ended and another began, as long as that gnarly distorted saw bass hit just right.

And while already important, the internet was growing beyond a place to read about music. It was becoming a breeding ground for a new kind of music culture that spilled from the URL and into the IRL seamlessly.

Myspace let artists bypass some of the old machinery of discovery. Blogs became highly opinionated record stores without walls. An MP3 could bounce from a bedroom in Paris to a blog in New York to a DJ set in Los Angeles almost overnight. You could stumble into a scene you didn’t know existed — and maybe it didn’t until now — because somebody with a “passion for graphic design” and very strong opinions uploaded a MediaFire link at 2 AM. But you couldn’t exactly live on the internet yet. You still had to leave the house.

That tension was a pillar of the era. Online discovery sent you offline: to shows, warehouse parties, DJ nights, record stores, and into rooms hodgepodged with people who had somehow discovered the same strange thing you had. The internet wasn’t very good at predicting what you wanted yet, which meant you had more opportunities to encounter things you didn’t. Information and scenes crashed into each other, and the music followed. Indie rock, disco, punk, electro, house, and pop collided freely, while remixes could become as culturally important as the songs they deconstructed. Maybe that’s why this particular era keeps resurfacing.

The current indie sleaze revival is easy to reduce to its artifacts: swoopy bangs, wired headphones, smeared eyeliner. The whole thing can start to feel like a remix of a remix. But I wonder if what we’re nostalgic for is something harder to photograph with whatever point-and-shoot camera TikTok told you to buy. We’re living with an internet that has become extraordinarily good at mirroring us, sometimes preemptively. Music arrives neatly on a chrome-plated platter, sorted into recommendations based on an echo of an echo of an echo of what you already like. No wonder the kids yearn for things to feel messy and simple again.

–Olive

Now Spinning On My Turntable
Joy Oladokun - Hope Is A Heavy Thing

Joy Oladokun has a way of making vulnerability feel conversational rather than confessional. “Kind,” the first song I heard from her forthcoming album Hope Is A Heavy Thing, is a great example: warm, direct, and disarmingly human, even as it moves through darker emotional territory.

That balance runs through Joy’s music. She moves freely between folk, soul, pop, and rock, but the center is always the songwriting. On Hope Is A Heavy Thing, out September 25th, she looks backward in order to find a way forward, pulling inspiration from the Soulquarians, Bob Dylan, J Dilla, afrobeats, and ’60s and ’70s protest music without sounding beholden to any of them.

Joy will also be coming to KCRW for a live performance, and I’m especially looking forward to hearing how these songs translate in the room.

More Music Moments

Check out our new Must Listen Series, sponsored by Qobuz

At KCRW, talented artists stream through the door daily, arriving as on-air guests or taping musical performances. Now, we’re bringing their tastes to you through the brand-new series Must Listen. Each episode, KCRW brings someone through the expansive CD library with two instructions: find something that is a “must listen” record, and leave a note in the CD case for the next individual who picks it. The first episode features Liz Phair and Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) ahead of their co-headlining show at The Greek Theatre. The upcoming episodes include visits from Ed O’Brien, Alabama Shakes, Fcukers, and more. KCRW’s Must Listen is sponsored by Qobuz, an independent music and streaming and download platform whose support reflects a shared commitment to human curation, intentional listening, and artist discovery.

Helado Tropical “Live On KCRW”

Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical are no strangers to KCRW, but this time they arrive together. Returning once again to KCRW as Helado Tropical, Roberto Carlos Lange and Fabi Reyna bring selections from their self-titled collaborative album to life — a meeting of two artists whose individual musical worlds feel remarkably naturally intertwined. Lange and Reyna make the collaboration feel like its own little ecosystem — warm, hypnotic, playful, special, and completely comfortable moving at its own pace. Watch their Live On KCRW performance now.

Cornelius Takes Over as KCRW’s September Resident DJ 

Few artists have built a sonic world as unmistakably their own as Cornelius. For more than three decades, Japanese multi-instrumentalist Keigo Oyamada has moved freely through psychedelic pop, ambient music, electronics, Brazilian music, minimalism, and whatever else catches his ear, transforming it all into something distinctly his own. His 1997 album Fantasma introduced that playful, hyper-detailed approach to a global audience, while his work since has continued to bend the boundaries between pop, sound design, and experimentation.

Now Cornelius joins KCRW as our Resident DJ for September, taking over Thursday nights at midnight with four hour-long mixes. The residency arrives alongside his new album REFRACTIONS which finds him opening his music further through collaboration and exchange.

Tune in every Thursday night/Friday morning from midnight–1 AM PT, or listen anytime on the KCRW app.

Upcoming Music Events

Close out the season with us this weekend at our last two Summer Nights events! First on Friday, September 4th, at the Autry Museum of the American West, hit the dance floor with a special vinyl guest DJ set from Wooden Wisdom, the DJ duo of Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie, and sets from KCRW DJs SiLVA & Ale Cohen. Then on Saturday, September 5th, we are taking over the corner of Lankershim and Magnolia Blvd, with sets from electro-pop rhythm and blues LA-based singer Madison McFerrin, and KCRW DJs Peanut Butter Wolf and LUXXURY. Don’t miss your last chance to party with us this summer!

🎶 🗓️ ➡️   Also On KCRW's Radar   ⬅️ 🗓️ 🎶

Thurs, Sept 3rd — KCRW & MakeOutMusic Present School Night at The Airliner

Fri, Sept 4th — KCRW & Live Nation Present The Charlatans UK at the Hollywood Palladium

Fri, Sept 4th - Sun, Sept 6th — Maestro of the Movies: A Tribute to John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl

Tues, Sept 8th — KCRW Presents: Liz Phair & Sleater-Kinney at the Greek

Wed, Sept 9th — Buddy Guy at the Hollywood Bowl

Thurs, Sept 10th — KCRW & ZZK Records Present Chanca Via Circuito & Coco Maria + El G at Townhouse Venice

Fri, Sept 11th — KCRW Presents: Thievery Corporation at YouTube Theater