Megan's Staff Picks
Thermal Are Burdened but Alive on 'Plaster Girl'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Nov 24, 2023
Thermal's music feels like a heaving chest, heavy with the weight of thick guitar fuzz, claustrophobic emotional landscapes and a racing he...
Pony Girl Release the Pressure Slowly on 'Laff It Off'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Nov 8, 2023
Some just pop the balloon, others untie the knot and apply pressure to let the air out slowly. Pony Girl's new album is an exercise in the...
Flyte Are Light as a Feather on their Self-Titled Third Album
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Nov 2, 2023
Listening to this Flyte record on a drizzly autumn day, as feels intended, casts a warm glow across the room. Like the crackling embers of...
Mali Velasquez Embarks on a Series of Beginnings with 'I'm Green'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Oct 20, 2023
"I drive you to the ER / But don't feel old enough," Mali Velasquez observes on "Turn Red," the kind of meditation-in-an-emergency Frank O'...
Paramore Bring Some Friends on Board for the Invigorating 'Re: This Is Why'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Oct 6, 2023
Every Paramore song tends to be its own little existential plane. That's why This Is Why stood out to me as their tightest and most cohesiv...
Hillsboro's Self-Titled Debut Is a Sparking Live Wire
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Sep 21, 2023
It's not everyday that a band shows up in your inbox with a debut album that sounds so fully formed. I don't know what I was expecting when...
Gatlin Finds Something Like Closure on 'I Sleep Fine Now'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Sep 15, 2023
Clarity. That's the sheen-smeared word that first comes to mind when I think of Gatlin, a singer-songwriter who is actually from Orlando, F...
Olivia Rodrigo Survives Teenhood on the Valiant 'GUTS'
Exclaim! Staff Picks
PUBLISHED Sep 11, 2023
The old saying goes that girls mature faster than boys. This is what we're told repeatedly, in the same breath that "he likes you" will be...
