[00:00] Sloane Rivera: The air feels a little sharper today, like the smell of ozone before a storm.
[00:06] Sloane Rivera: I'm Sloan Rivera.
[00:07] Julian Vance: And I'm Julian Vance.
[00:09] Julian Vance: You're tuned into Stereocurrent at stereocurrent.neuralnewscast.com.
[00:14] Julian Vance: Your daily frequency for the records that matter and the rumors that might.
[00:19] Sloane Rivera: Julian, it's rare that we get two Titans of the Indiverse announcing within the same breath.
[00:24] Sloane Rivera: But here we are. The icons are reclaiming the throne.
[00:28] Julian Vance: Yeah, it's a good day for the analog souls and the digital punks alike, Sloan.
[00:33] Julian Vance: Where are we starting the needle?
[00:35] Sloane Rivera: We have to start with the queen of the provocative.
[00:39] Sloane Rivera: Peaches is finally ending her 10-year silence.
[00:43] Sloane Rivera: On February 20th, we get no lube, so rude.
[00:46] Sloane Rivera: And honestly, if that title doesn't tell you she's still got that jagged, electroclash edge, nothing will.
[00:54] Julian Vance: Ten years is a lifetime in the electronics scene, but Peaches isn't a trend chaser, she's a trend maker.
[00:59] Julian Vance: What's truly fascinating to me is the label move.
[01:03] Julian Vance: She signed with Kill Rockstars for this one.
[01:06] Julian Vance: That is a marriage of icons right there.
[01:08] Sloane Rivera: Exactly.
[01:09] Sloane Rivera: It's poetic, isn't it?
[01:11] Sloane Rivera: Kill Rockstars has always been the sanctuary for the boundary pushers, the ones who aren't
[01:16] Sloane Rivera: afraid to get their hands dirty.
[01:18] Sloane Rivera: It suggests a return to that raw, genre-blending philosophy that made her a
[01:22] Sloane Rivera: cultural phenomenon in the early 2000s.
[01:25] Julian Vance: It's part of this wider Canadian resurgence we're seeing, too.
[01:28] Julian Vance: Between her and the news from Broken Social scene and Metric,
[01:31] Julian Vance: Toronto and Montreal are feeling like the epicenter again.
[01:34] Julian Vance: But she is not the only one coming back to the fray.
[01:37] Sloane Rivera: Um, no.
[01:39] Sloane Rivera: The internet practically buckled under the weight of the Mitzky News.
[01:43] Sloane Rivera: Eighth studio album, Julian.
[01:46] Sloane Rivera: Nothing's about to happen to me, dropping February 27th.
[01:49] Julian Vance: Yep.
[01:50] Julian Vance: The master of the emotionally resonant gut punch.
[01:53] Julian Vance: From Barry Me at Makeout Creek to now, she has this way of navigating personal voids that feels universal.
[02:00] Julian Vance: That title?
[02:01] Julian Vance: It's classic Mitzky.
[02:02] Julian Vance: It's a shrug and a scream at the same time.
[02:05] Sloane Rivera: Her lyrics always feel like a secret you weren't supposed to hear.
[02:09] Sloane Rivera: With her devoted following, February is suddenly looking like the most high-stakes month for indie music we've seen in years.
[02:16] Julian Vance: It's a heavy month for the art, but the industry infrastructure is also going through a bit of a midlife crisis or maybe a rebirth.
[02:24] Julian Vance: Did you catch the Billboard Power 100 notes?
[02:27] Sloane Rivera: The Year of the Human.
[02:29] Sloane Rivera: Sir Lucy and Grange sounds like he's trying to build a moat around artistry to protect it from the AI flood.
[02:36] Sloane Rivera: It's a nice sentiment, but BMG's Thomas Kosefeld seems to think AI will just be the new studio assistant.
[02:44] Julian Vance: It's the tension of 2026, isn't it?
[02:46] Julian Vance: On one hand, you have CAA and Emma Banks talking about artist burnout and ethical ticketing,
[02:52] Julian Vance: which, let's be real, is long overdue.
[02:54] Julian Vance: And on the other, you have this aggressive catalog acquisition.
[02:58] Julian Vance: The machine wants the old hits, while the humans are trying to make new ones.
[03:02] Sloane Rivera: That's where Duetti comes in.
[03:05] Sloane Rivera: They just raised $200 million to bridge that gap.
[03:08] Sloane Rivera: They're letting indie artists, even those making as little as $2,000 a year, monetize their catalogs.
[03:16] Sloane Rivera: It's democratization, Julian, or at least a very expensive version of it.
[03:21] Julian Vance: It's about access.
[03:22] Julian Vance: If you aren't in the top 1%, you've historically been locked out of those big catalog deals.
[03:28] Julian Vance: Duetti is closing 80 deals a month now.
[03:31] Julian Vance: That's a lot of artists getting a check that doesn't involve a label debt.
[03:35] Sloane Rivera: And speaking of bypassing the gatekeepers, have you looked at ROKK, the streaming platform
[03:42] Sloane Rivera: founded by the Camelot and Mentalist guys?
[03:44] Sloane Rivera: They just launched a direct music upload feature.
[03:47] Julian Vance: I love the philosophy there.
[03:49] Julian Vance: No minimum stream threshold for royalties, no percentage cut from the artist payout.
[03:55] Julian Vance: It's built for the heavy music scene, but it feels like a blueprint for how streaming
[03:59] Julian Vance: could actually work if it wasn't a race to the bottom.
[04:02] Sloane Rivera: It's the direct-to-fan dream.
[04:04] Sloane Rivera: If the Billboard Power 100 is the view from the penthouse, R-OK Joy is the view from the
[04:10] Sloane Rivera: garage where the band is actually practicing.
[04:13] Sloane Rivera: It's refreshing.
[04:14] Julian Vance: Speaking of garages and legacies, we have to talk about the Men of the Hour in Manchester.
[04:20] Julian Vance: Noel Gallagher just picked up The Brit for Songwriter of the Year.
[04:24] Sloane Rivera: Three decades of Oasis and the High Flying Birds.
[04:28] Sloane Rivera: And after that reunion tour sold a million albums in a single year, it's less of an award and more of a coronation.
[04:35] Sloane Rivera: Three Oasis albums in the UK Top Five simultaneously.
[04:39] Sloane Rivera: That's not nostalgia.
[04:41] Sloane Rivera: That's a fever.
[04:42] Julian Vance: It's the Gallagher world.
[04:43] Julian Vance: We're just living in it.
[04:45] Julian Vance: But the Brits are looking forward to.
[04:47] Julian Vance: Olivia Dean and Lola Young leading the nominations, it's a good balance.
[04:51] Julian Vance: And the BBC is leaning into that UK indie heritage with a new six music stream launching this summer.
[04:58] Sloane Rivera: The Indie Forever expansion.
[05:01] Sloane Rivera: 80% UK artists, everything from The Smiths to Wolf Alice.
[05:06] Sloane Rivera: It's basically a curated history of why we love the station.
[05:09] Sloane Rivera: They're digging into the BBC archives for live sessions, which is where the real magic is.
[05:15] Julian Vance: It's that regional storytelling.
[05:17] Julian Vance: Speaking of regional, the North is busy.
[05:20] Julian Vance: Ghost Rocket just launched Skyrocket Records in Canada.
[05:23] Julian Vance: Luke Danilon is basically saying talent isn't the problem.
[05:27] Julian Vance: It's the lack of a global machine for indie artists.
[05:30] Sloane Rivera: Right.
[05:31] Sloane Rivera: They're offering management, sync, global PR, all the things that usually require signing
[05:37] Sloane Rivera: your soul away to a major.
[05:39] Sloane Rivera: It's a 15-year-old company finally scaling up to meet the moment.
[05:42] Sloane Rivera: Right.
[05:42] Sloane Rivera: And they're doing a ticket giveaway with Billboard Canada all month.
[05:47] Julian Vance: It's a good time to be an artist in the Great White North.
[05:50] Julian Vance: But let's look at the new arrivals.
[05:51] Julian Vance: Hallie Grace is building some serious momentum for her debut, Motivation, coming in March.
[05:57] Sloane Rivera: Her voice is distinctive, confessional but with a pop sensibility that doesn't feel manufactured.
[06:04] Sloane Rivera: The final single, You're My Person, drops February 13th.
[06:08] Sloane Rivera: There's a premiere at V13 earlier that week that people should keep an eye on.
[06:12] Julian Vance: And we can't forget the new music Friday we just lived through.
[06:16] Julian Vance: Silver Sun pickups and Jay Buchanan leading the charge.
[06:19] Julian Vance: But the real surprise?
[06:20] Julian Vance: Haley Williams has a new band called Power Snatch.
[06:24] Sloane Rivera: Power Snatch.
[06:25] Sloane Rivera: I love it.
[06:25] Sloane Rivera: It's gritty, it's fresh.
[06:28] Sloane Rivera: And then you have Rolling Blackout's coastal fever returning after three years with a six-and-a-half-minute jam.
[06:34] Sloane Rivera: They hadn't come back to play it safe.
[06:36] Julian Vance: Safe is boring, Sloan.
[06:38] Julian Vance: Even the veterans are shaking it up.
[06:39] Julian Vance: The black keys are going back to those bluesy roots, and Peter Gabriel is teasing us with more tracks from his upcoming record.
[06:46] Julian Vance: It's a rich tapestry right now.
[06:48] Sloane Rivera: It feels like the industry is finally realizing that human isn't just a buzzword for 2026.
[06:55] Sloane Rivera: It's the only thing that actually sells records.
[06:58] Sloane Rivera: Whether it's peaches being rude or Mitzky being melancholy, we're here for the mess of it.
[07:03] Julian Vance: The mess is where the best songs live.
[07:06] Julian Vance: That's our time for today. I'm Julian Vance.
[07:10] Sloane Rivera: And I'm Sloan Rivera. Keep your ears open and your stylus clean.
[07:14] Sloane Rivera: This has been Stereocurrent.
[07:17] Sloane Rivera: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
[07:20] Sloane Rivera: View our AI Transparency Policy at neuralnewscast.com.