Loud, melodic and built to last: this week’s indie rock bops move between punk liturgy, orchestral heartbreak and late-night power trio anthems with the confidence of bands who have nothing left to prove.
Perry Blocker Sand – Red Sails In The Sunset
Perry Blocker Sand’s “Red Sails In The Sunset” is an excellent rock reimagining of a genuine classic, giving it a fresh reason to exist
“Red Sails In The Sunset” has been recorded by Bing Crosby, The Beatles, Fats Domino and dozens of others since Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams wrote it in 1935, and what Perry Blocker Sand brings to it is a harder, more driven rock arrangement that strips away the nostalgia and replaces it with momentum. It’s got a grit and a groove that really, really works. The whole thing shuffles along with style, and it definitely lands as a pop rock zinger, helping us to understand why the song has lasted. Perry’s vocal is fab too.
Perry Blocker Sand (Per Otto Sand) is an Oslo-based singer-songwriter and composer who has spent years building a catalogue that moves across rock, country, pop and beat music, working with a rotating cast of top musicians. His approach across the catalogue is rooted in melody and directness, and “Red Sails In The Sunset” is a natural extension of those instincts applied to source material he clearly knows well. Loads of fun, and we’ll be digging into the rest of his album.
TOTAL REVERENDS – Where Is God
TOTAL REVERENDS’ “Where Is God” is a lovely piece of punk energy: a Rome-born project evolving into a compelling and collaborative rock experiment
“Where Is God” is taken from a project born from a December 8th booking at a Rome venue, where Francesco Forni assembled a congregation of musicians and performers to subvert familiar sacred material into something rawer and stranger. It genuinely kicks off with bags of energy, brilliant guitar and a strong production. TOTAL REVERENDS are a new name to us, but we won’t forget them now. This single blends that punk energy with choral arrangement and experimental structure. It’s a heady mix, and we can’t get enough of it.
TOTAL REVERENDS is the duo of Francesco Forni, guitarist and vocalist whose collaborators include Niccolò Fabi, Marina Rei and Napoli Centrale, and Piero Monterisi, drummer whose credits span Renato Carosone, Tiromancino, Daniele Silvestri and PFM. The project operates as a modular ensemble, expanding and contracting depending on what the material requires, and the album that contains “Where Is God” represents its fullest realisation to date. We will definitely be checking out the album this weekend, because this single is fantastic. An essential listen this week.
Stale Jan – I Don’t Bend
Stale Jan serve up an excellent, high-voltage Norwegian indie rock anthem
“I Don’t Bend” is a track about refusal: refusing to buckle under manipulation, mob mentality or manufactured consensus. We need more of that these days, don’t we? I’m into the production, which is driving and high-voltage, which suits the lyrical stance, and the razor-sharp writing keeps the argument clear without reducing it to a slogan. It sits in the poppier end of alt-rock while carrying enough edge to make the defiance feel genuine rather than performed. It’s a brilliantly constructed track, the drums particularly standing out.
Stale Jan is a Norwegian indie-rock songwriter who debuted in 2024 and has built a consistent run of releases since, earning recognition as a rising voice in the Scandinavian indie scene. His tracks share a sonic catharsis and a contemporary directness, and “I Don’t Bend” is among his strongest statements to date. A brilliant single, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on Stale Jan this year.
cadzo – Windfall
cadzo bring the vibes with a brilliant piece of Colorado indie rock: 2000s Britpop instincts, a basement recording setup, and a band that went from formation to 49,000 Spotify streams in under two years.
“Windfall” sits in the melodic, keyboard-inflected end of indie rock that draws from Britpop and New Wave without being trapped by either. There’s a compelling mix of genres here, and it lands in a great place, with cadzo’s production approach keeping things feel immediate rather than nostalgic. I love the shimmer in the guitars, the switch up in drum patterns, and I’d really love to see this live because it sounds like bags of energetic fun.
cadzo formed in Colorado in 2023 between guitarist and singer Collin Orr and drummer Julian Ferrara, two longtime friends who rebuilt their collaboration with renewed ambition. Keyboardist Will Benson joined shortly after, and bassist Will Brauch came on board in 2025. Their third single “Larimer Street” accumulated 49,000 Spotify streams, and the debut LP followed in November 2024. It’s an essential listen this week; a fantastic single.
Reetoxa – Love Keeps Burning Still
Reetoxa’s new single is a superb orchestral rock ballad: epic, warm-hearted and pushes every one of our pop-rock buttons
The new single from Reetoxa, “Love Keeps Burning Still”, is here and it’s a pretty special track. It traces the arc of a specific relationship: Jason McKee met Lee at Munich’s Oktoberfest in 2003, married in 2011, divorced in 2016 after his dedication to music became incompatible with their life together. The song emerged during COVID lockdown, when McKee was writing up to ten songs a day, and was produced with Simon Moro using a European orchestra coordinated entirely over Zoom. A pretty impressive story, but it’s the track that’s the real standout here. A chorus that soars, and it’s no surprise that the result stunned the friends who first heard it, because the very same thing happened to us over at BOPS. It’s a brilliant, epic pop rock banger that we can’t get enough of.
Reetoxa is the Melbourne project of Jason McKee, a songwriter who spent thirty years developing his craft The experience sits wonderfully in the song: the emotional specificity and melodic generosity of “Love Keeps Burning Still” are not the work of someone at the beginning of a creative journey, even if it is among his first recordings. An incredible single, and we hope there’s more coming from Reetoxa.