Indiecast - A Geese Scandal? Plus: Live Nation Monopoly, Coachella, Angine De Poitrine, and My New Band Believe

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

A hashing-heavy episode opens with news of a big recent court ruling against Live Nation (1:15) and whether it might lead to cheaper concert tickets. The guys then talk about a digital marketing company linked to Geese and many other indie acts that pumps up social-media chatter (8:32). After that, they discuss their favorite highlights of the ongoing Coachella festival (28:00), do a "yay or nay" on the viral math-rock band Angine De Poitrine (37:45) and review the new album by My New Band Believe (45:59). In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the band Garden Ants while Steven stumps for The Delines (56:22). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indicast is presented by Amazon Music. We want to welcome to Indicast. In this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends, and wow, there are so many trends in this episode. We are going to talk about a scandal, perhaps, involving geese. We also talk about this year's Coachella Festival. We, yea or nay, the viral rock band, Angine de Poitrine, in review the latest from My New Band Believe.

My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and go. host, he owes Eddie Vedder an apology. Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? Look, I stand by what I said about spin the black circle on my middle school newspaper. It's Eddie Vedder's fault for subscribing in the first place, you know? Yeah, yeah, he was railing against middle school music critics back in the day. Yeah, spin the silver circle, not the black circle. This is the 90s, bub. That's true. Although Eddie underrated low-key brought back vinyl. I think that was the opening salvo in the 90s. vitology coming on on vinyl. But that's neither here nor there.

We have big news that broke the day before we started recording on Wednesday. I'm going to read from the New York Times regarding Ticketmaster. A federal jury on Wednesday found that Live Nation, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, has operated as a monopoly in violation of federal and state antitrust laws, ending a closely watched trial in New York that could have far-reaching consequences in the music industry. The judge overseeing the case, which I'm not going to say, his name looks very hard to pronounce, I'm sure or butcher it, will determine remedies and a separate proceeding that could include significant divestments by Live Nation, meaning that they would be broken up, possibly, or even

a breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, an outcome that the federal government has called for when filing its case almost two years ago, though it is sure to be vigorously contested by Live Nation. Live Nation will also face it. monetary damages. The jury determined that Ticketmaster overcharged consumers by a $1.72 cents per ticket, which adds up over millions and millions of tickets. The judge will next set in overall damages based on the jury's finding. Ian, what is your feeling right now hearing this news? Well, if you want to read more about Eddie Vedder and Ticketmaster, Long Road, Pearl Jamming the soundtrack of a generation, available wherever books are sold. And I didn't say that,

that counts as a recommendation not as advertising thank you yeah i mean i just love this idea if you bought um i don't know if you bought like neon indian tickets in 2010 you may be entitled to compensation my first my initial take on this is because i can't let sports cast die makes me think of the obanan lawsuit that eventually allowed for name image and likeness in college sports. Just in the sense of this feels equitable and it's a rare victory. It seems like the good guys won. But I do wonder, first off, like, whether Ticketmaster will or Live Nation will appeal

this for the next five decades. I'm just wondering whether something's sloppier and even more unwieldy will come from the breakup of this corrupt, tyrannical, single governing body. Like, I think it's overall good, but maybe I just lack imagination of trying to consider what comes after. Yeah, I mean, my feeling hearing this news, my reaction was twofold. One was that it seems extremely obvious that Live Nation is a monopoly. I don't see how anyone could make a plausible counter argument to that.

So there's that. So the judgment just on its face seems just and proper. The second reaction is that LiveNation, or Ticketmaster before that or whatever you want to call this entity, they've seen like a monopoly for like 30 years. Going back to Eddie Vedder in the mid-90s, and if you're too young to remember, I guess it was Stone Gossard and Jeff Amet,

they were the ones that testified in front of Congress about Ticketmaster being this monopoly in Pearl Jam, tried to tour by playing non-Ticketmaster venues, and it basically derailed their career in the mid-90s, and then they finally had to. capitulate and re-team with Ticketmaster just like everybody else. But this has always seemed like a monopoly. So this ruling, while I'm happy to hear it,

I do, I guess, have some skepticism about how this is actually going to play out in a tangible manner. They mentioned in the story that this lawsuit was brought about two years ago. And of course, we're talking about the Biden administration, this originating in. And back then there was a person named Lena Khan who was in charge of the Federal Trade Commission. And she was famously very aggressive about monopolies and going after corporations. And however you might feel about Joe Biden and that whole thing, wherever you fall in the political divide, I think it is without question that his administration with Lena Khan at the FTC was pretty aggressive, at least relative to other administrations and going after corporations.

now we have of course a different president in the white house a different administration one that one could say is maybe not as aggressive toward corruption in corporations so i'm a little concerned about that uh but yeah i guess we should just be happy with this news though and we can fantasize about a world where tickets are a dollar 72 cheaper and maybe even more than that. I mean, maybe something can go to that, but it feels, even with this news that sounds very momentous, it feels like a lot has to play out yet. Yeah, I think it's more about like, hey, we can have a venue that doesn't work with Ticketmaster. I think that's a big part of it. Maybe it'll open up, like, what type of venues are available, you know, how bands can sell tickets.

I think that there's, it's going to be probably pretty messy at the outset, but ultimately, you know, Because it's a it's a it's a it's hope core in the news if you will. I heard that's hot too if you want to talk about trends. Hope core. Yes. If Project Hail Mary hadn't come out and been such a big hit signaling hope core, this judgment wouldn't have happened. Clearly it's part of the vibe ship that's happening in America.

Yeah, I mean, it is impossible right now to do a major tour and not work with with Live Nation. to play the, especially as you get into the bigger rooms, to sell tickets or to have different kinds of promoters. I mean, they are so entrenched. Their tentacles are spread everywhere. Again, it just seems self-evident that they are a monopoly. So, I don't know. I feel like this seems very logical and it should have happened, but I'm also wondering why hasn't it happened before now. And is there ever going to be a conceivable reality where they get broken up. We'll see. We will be monitoring this at Indycast HQ.

We've got our reporters on the ground covering it. Also, Lena Khan's been on Pablo Tori finds out. I think she's been on Topo Trap House. Maybe that's going to be something we, uh, maybe that's something we can do now that we got. Yeah, she was on, uh, she was on with Adam Friedland too. So she's working her way down the dude podcast chain. So maybe by what, 2028, we can get some Lena Khan on the show, maybe?

Totally. Yeah, in case, you know, a new administration comes in that year and she's back where she started too big for us. So the window's open. And of course, that would be a tragedy. If she had actual power, we want her just to have no power and be able to be on podcasts. That would clearly be the better outcome for her.

Let's get to the story that I mentioned in the introduction. A scandal, possibly, maybe, probably involving the band geese. Your DMs have been blowing up. My DMs have been blowing up. It's like, we're just back. Yes. You know, it's our second week back. Yeah, woo life and now a geese scandal.

It's all downhill from here. It does feel a little like we've been in retirement for a while, and then we come out of retirement and, like, Watergate drops in your lap immediately. It's like the perfect topic to talk about on a podcast happens just like that. Let me fill this in for people listening who may not be social media addicts like Ian and I and don't know what we're talking about. I'm going to start, I'm going to lay this out for a couple minutes because this has been a long simmering story that blew up this week. A few weeks ago, a singer-songwriter named Eliza McLean, who also has a great substack that you should

go check out. She's a really good writer. She wrote this post called Fake Fans. And it was based on a podcast interview that these two guys, these two marketers from a company called Chaotic Good Projects did. And these guys basically are involved in social media campaigns for all kinds of artists. Some of them in the indie world, some of them in the pop world. They work with artists like Ok-Lew and Dijon. as well as Justin Bieber and Dua Lipa. And they also work with a little band called Geese, who you might have heard of before,

as well as Cameron Winter in his solo career. And basically what these guys do is they create buzz online, or they help to pump steroids into buzz that might already be there. So, for instance, if a band is on Saturday Night Live, and they perform, after the show, these guys are online creating all these accounts either directly or they're using bots to just talk about how great this performance was. Just to kind of add to the chatter, to build up the chatter with the ultimate purpose, I think,

of creating relevance. The idea that this is important. This is part of the zeitgeist. And if you don't know what this is, you should at least pay attention a little bit to it. And maybe you listen to the music in conjunction with that. And you get to form your own opinion about how you feel about the band. So Eliza McLean, she wrote about this. No one else noticed this podcast.

These guys were at South by Southwest. They talked to Billboard magazine. And they're just like spilling their secrets. In a way that makes me wonder how good these guys are at their jobs. Like if you're hiring people to create accounts on social media to talk about your band, you probably don't want those people talking to Billboard, the top industry publication in music. and blabbing about it on a podcast. It doesn't seem great in that respect.

But anyway, no one really noticed this podcast. Eliza McLean wrote about it, and she wrote a really great piece about how it's really hard as a working musician, all the crap you have to do to just get attention, all of the content you have to constantly be creating, whether it's TikToks or memes or just social media posts, and how that's like a full-time job in addition to just being a musician. And she actually wrote something really interesting about how, in a way, she understands why a company like this exists because it's so much of a burden for a musician to do that.

You can just pay these guys and they do it for you. Of course, what they're doing is also, I think we could say weird and gross and shady. Objectively, it's weird and gross. But anyway, she writes this post. It starts gathering traction online. But it doesn't totally blow up. And then this week, Wired Magazine, they pick up this story. They basically elaborate upon it.

And they run a story with the headline, The fanfare around the band geese actually was a sci-up. And then the subhead reads, The Brooklyn Band Geese was labeled an industry plant by those who questioned its sudden ubiquity. Maybe it was. The all-important maybe after a statement like that. OJ, like if I did it, this is how I.

did it or whatever. Some people are saying this person hits their wife. Maybe it's true. You know, like it's basically that kind of framing. So a very sensationalistic headline, although when you read the story, I think the story is more measured and nuanced than that.

But, you know, most people just look at the headline. Yeah. In situations like this. So this story's blown up. People calling geese an industry plant saying that they have fake fans, that their popularity isn't real. I have feelings about,

this. I wrote a long post about this, 3,500 words on my substack. I go in depth in there. If you want to read that, that's my full thoughts on this. If I did that on a podcast, this would be like a three-hour episode. But I want to hear from you, Ian. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I'm sure you do too. Do you feel duped? Do you feel like you were tricked? Because we both said that getting killed by Geese was the best album of 2025. Do you want to offer a retraction because you have been brainwashed into feeling this way? Yeah, I mean, how much better of a headline would our love was only half real be? I mean, that just shows you've engaged with the art.

I mean, why can't Geese do it the way, the old-fashioned way that every other New York City buzz band did it, which is being friends with music writers? You know, there's always going to be like some way to juice. the stats. And I think what was telling about this whole controversy that is that in addition to our DMs being blown up to a degree, which I don't know if we've seen that in the history of Indycast, not since Pitchfork was folded into GQ, have I seen more like just straight up loser talk from other musicians and watched music writers? Because I think we've known for a very, very long time that industry

plant and sciop or just what that just means is like this is stuff I don't like because it's so much easier to point at something nefarious and conspiratorial rather than making a critical argument beyond hey the people who like this band annoy me which is mostly

what it always boils down to it's like a couple of people and this is not just with music it's just like hey a couple people online are annoying and so this is why this is a societal problem But, you know, I think what really, you know, and the Wired article, you're right. At the end, Eliza McLean's like, yeah, I do it too. Not going to lie.

I'm just not sure if there's any connection between the kind of success Geese is experiencing and what this chaotic good project is being accused of. Like if Geese was topping Billboard or like the Spotify numbers for, you know, taxes was jacked up, then we can have something quantifiable to put towards. But, you know, this is a bit on their third album. Their live shows do really, really well. They have a lot of critical acclaim. And, you know, maybe like relevance has something to do with it.

But I think what this just kind of shows is that maybe chaotic good is not actually good at what they do for a living. It's just that they are good at convincing people to pay them for what they say they're good at. Well, yeah, and that is something that's been under-discussed here, is that it's to the benefit of these marketing companies for there not to be easily quantifiable data that proves or disproves whether what they do works. Because we clearly have a situation where there's a lot of conversation about geese online and geese is a popular band. But what is the causation relationship there? That's something we don't know. And I won't even say that there isn't a cause there.

I am sure that there are people who have checked out this band because people kept talking about them or they kept seeing chatter about it on social media. I think that is what marketing and PR does. It creates a feeling of relevance. It creates this thing of, I need to check this thing out or I'm going to be left out of a larger conversation. I also think, you know, I don't want to downplay this too much because I have seen this complaint online, which I think is legitimate, where, you know, a lot of music writers, a lot of people like us, I think have taken the position that this isn't that big of a deal or that it's more in line with what has happened historically. And we don't have enough time to get into all of the shady promotional strategies that have happened in the music business since the beginning of time, including. payola or you know just undue influence that you know people deciding that they're going to favor a certain artist just because of a personal relationship i mean that happens all the time

but i think there is some frustration that i've seen out there that i think is legitimate that you can't just hand wave this off completely and act like it's not a big deal uh and someone in a listener out there who might be a geese fan and hears this and and it bothers them i think that's legitimate reaction. To me, the most sort of pernicious thing about this is that online chatter or Instagram followers or all of this sort of ephemeral stuff that exist online that can be easily gamed by people like chaotic good. It does influence certain entities that don't operate on their own taste or make decisions based on whether they like something or not. We're talking about people that book music festivals, for instance, or people that program a playlist that might be

influential, or even like a website or music publication that's deciding who they're going to cover. I mean, you and I talk about this all the time, about the gap that exists between artists that seem to get a lot of attention online, either because they're being written about or being talked about, and then, like, they can't sell out a room, 250-cap room in, like, Kansas City or something. And then, meanwhile, you have artists that never get talked about, and and they seem to be thriving and having a big audience. Like you said, I don't think that applies to geese, because where the rubber hits the road,

people do show up to see them. And I do think there's a genuine excitement for them. But you can't say that that sort of creation of relevance doesn't have a real-world effect. I think it does, at least in the short term. Now, I also happen to think that you can't make people like something that they wouldn't normally like just because of promotion. I know that that's like a common feeling out there.

I really don't think that's true. And honestly, I would say, like, if you hate geese, you are the evidence that that is true because there's been a lot of talk about geese. There's a lot of year-end lists and there's online chatter and you haven't been swayed by it. If anything, that stuff has probably made you stronger in your belief that this band sucks. So if you can think for yourself, is it really fair to think that like other people can't think for themselves that like they're just liking this thing because it's being talked about a lot? I mean, that to me is the crux of this. Is, you know, because I don't think that, because I do

think that personal taste over the long haul wins out. You can get a lot of attention and you can get people to try your music, which is a very important thing. just to be able to try something. But, you know, over the long haul, it's not going to stick if people don't actually like it. Like, people are ruled by their guts. I mean, people voted for Donald Trump, despite all the evidence that they heard,

despite the media telling them over and over again, how terrible this guy was. They voted for him against their own interests. And they did it because they just felt like they liked the guy. You know, that is a powerful thing. And sometimes being told that this thing is great, that you sense isn't great, it actually has the opposite effect of promotion.

So, again, I don't want to say this isn't important because I think it is, but I also stop short of feeling like people can be brainwashed into liking something. I think another thing, which is maybe underplayed,

is how I read something in New York Times recently where this really stuck with me that TikTok is our editor-in-chief right now in that, Which is that that is determining what we write about. And it's not like the fans, the average rank and file who is at a geese show that could be duped by this. It's music writers, you know, who have to, like, write about the trends. You know what I'm saying?

Like, this is, you know, there's this difference between geese and Jimithy. And by the way, yeah, in our new phase, we're still talking about Jimothy on Indycast. And I think it just goes to show as well. This story depressed me because I think jobs like chaotic good are going to be the only, like one of the five types of jobs that exist in like 10 years. Because there is this, I think, very unfair assumption that to be an artist, you have to do everything, like promotion, production, distributing. Like there are, I think for so many people, even as a dietitian, the thought of branding myself and promoting myself is so disgusting. will never, ever, ever leave the current job that I have. And I think that the process and the thought of self-promotion is so gross to most artists

that the less gross thing is to pay someone like, hey, out of good to do that. Yeah. I mean, the thing about this story that's good is that we are talking about this and that it's out in the open. And as much as I want to make fun of these guys for talking on a podcast about it, because I do think that was incredibly stupid for them to do from like just a self-interest standpoint. I am glad they did it as a critic and as a music fan because people should be aware of what they see online and what might appear to be like word of mouth can be gained as easily as anything else.

You know, the way that people are skeptical of, you know, a music website that might give a good review of something. and say, well, they just have good publicist, and that's why they like it. You should also be suspicious of things that you see online, that someone that you don't know saying something is great, or their name is Thomas 06, 3, 5, 27, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, you know, maybe they're not an actual person. I would actually say that this is good for people like us. Yeah. We're people.

We're actual people, and you can trust, if you're a, if you're a person, you're a person, fan, you want to gravitate to people that you can trust, that you know, are human beings that have, you know, a certain level of taste or whatever. I mean, we have no taste at all on this show, clearly. But, you know, I'm just saying someone, either us or someone like us, I think, hopefully that's good for people like us. You could put more stock in these trusted voices. But I also think, you know, this is something where they're going to be moving on from this. I feel like this strategy is probably already dying. Yeah.

Because people are onto it now, and now it's going to be something that's some other level of insidiousness. But there is, you talked about sports cast earlier. I mean, it's similar to cheating in sports. I feel like there's always going to be some level of cheating because it is a game. It is a competition, and people are going to find whatever advantage that they can get. and if there's some way that they can get their artist in front of more people to decide whether they like it or not, they're going to find it. So whether it's a fake social media account, I mean, you've got influencers online who are being

paid to hawk certain things. I mean, I don't know what the next frontier of this certain thing is, but I feel like this tactic might be on its way out because now we're talking about it. And now there's going to be some other secret tactic that is devised by someone. Yeah, I need to figure out if chaotic good works. I'm tired of tweeting to 600 people after having 40,000 on my old account, man. Maybe I need to hire them. Yeah.

And also, everything I learned about payola comes from the full house episode where Jesse buys all the copy. Or no, Jesse's family buys all the copies of that song. He did with the Beach Boys, so it's sold out of the record store. You know, we learned young. The game's changed, man. Yeah. Well, you know, we have a totally pure and powerful corporation behind us now with this show. So we should be ALK for in terms of publicity.

So hopefully they can help you out. Here's the ultimate conspiracy theory with this. And this will be the last thing we talk about before we talk about Coachella. I don't know if you saw this, but there was another Geese story this week or Cameron Winter story. TMZ of all people. I don't know if they first reported this, but they were the place where I saw it on my social media feed. Snapped photos in a video of Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodriguez on a dinner date in Los Angeles. Did you see this?

No, I'm still kind of tripping off the one that I saw before, which is clearly made up about Cameron Winter and Ella Amhoff, Kamala Harris's stepdaughter. No, no, no, that's fake news. Don't even report that. No, no, this is real. There was a video and a photo. of Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodriguez hanging out in Los Angeles, which came out right after the Wired story.

So are we to assume this is more marketing wizards cleansing the timeline here with a little like indie meets pop star love story possibility? I mean, if you want to go, like I'm saying that as a joke, but it also makes a lot of sense

Yeah. Like they were like, hey, Cameron, can you go? Because I don't even know if they're dating. It's not like they're canoodling in the photo or anything. They're just walking. My sense is that they're probably just friends, but maybe someone was like, Cameron, once you go get a falafel with Olivia Rodriguez

and we'll get some paparazzi to take a photo of it, we'll cleanse the timeline and maybe that'll reduce the heat on this story a little bit. Yeah, we are through the looking glass people. Could have happened. I don't know. that seems more plausible to me than some of these other things. But anyway, having said that, let's talk about Coachella. And Coachella, of course, the first weekend was last weekend.

The second weekend is this upcoming weekend. And, you know, we always have an excuse, I guess, every year to talk about Coachella. I feel like we're normally pretty down on it, which stands to reason because we're two guys in our 40s. and we don't go to music festivals that much anymore. So it's kind of a washed opinion, perhaps, that we aren't as into Coachella maybe as we would have once been back in the 2000s. I got to say, though, and this is also going to sound washed, but I was watching the live stream of the festival on YouTube,

and it did make me wonder, why would anyone go to a festival now? when you can watch a free live stream on YouTube and the production was like really good. I was impressed by it. You know, they've got all these different camera angles. Sometimes they're doing like cool stylistic things. Like when Jack White did his performance, it was in black and white,

which was a very Jack White type thing to do. I don't know. I was a little Coachella Pilled last weekend. I was watching a lot of performances. Jack White, I mean, these are all, you know, artists that you would expect me to be listening to, but Jack White, nine-inch nails, that performance with boys' noise? Is it? Yeah, nine-inch noise.

Nine-ish noise? How did he get hooked up? Why is it boys' noise all of a sudden with nine-inch nails? They're like the type of group that you always see at, like, the third line of Coachell. Like, they're playing, like, the 11 o'clock show at the Sahara tent. That is a, you know, that's like, that's like, you know, that's like, you know, that's, like, one of those, I guess, like what you were talking about before, it's like, we don't see anyone writing about them, but they are just a mainstay at things like that. And, yeah, nine inch

noise. Maybe it's just like, hey, that's a funny thing. Hey, what if we actually did it? Yeah. But yeah, the album comes out, I think, today. Yeah. Yeah. And like Atticus Ross, is he just like on the unemployment line now? Is he still hanging out too? Like, he's not the collaborator de jour anymore. Yeah. Are they going to be on that like Facebook, the the social network sequel? I don't know. Oh, yeah. I heard, you know,

speaking of that movie, a little movie cast here, Jeremy Strong from Secession apparently is playing Mark Zuckerberg in the new movie. And apparently he's amazing in it. Oh, I'm sure. And he actually looks more like

the real Zuckerberg than Jesse Eisenberg did. At least now, you know, now the gold chain like MMA Mark Zuckerberg. So I think, Good casting. We approve. I also watched the strokes, of course, who I thought were great. I thought they sounded great.

Julian Casablancus doing a shout-out to our presenting partner. He had the Amazon Crime shirt wearing. That was an interesting thing. Are we allowed to talk about this on the show? Are we going to be people coming in? Making no judgments on that. But, you know, he was, I don't know if you saw that performance. he was like pretty funny.

Yeah, he was talking some funny stuff, yeah. Talking about the draft and... Yeah, that was good. You registered for the draft, not the NFL draft, but like the military draft that Trump has been talking about. I don't know. Did you watch any of the live streams? Were you into Coachella?

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's the fact that a couple of my coworkers, who, by the way, are like, you know, 30, 32 years old went this year. I paid more attention than I have. having a long time and I looked at the schedule and thought you know what like if someone paid me to be there I could actually make everyday work with the minimum of downtime like I'll see jane remover and then okay Lou and uh so yeah I mean it seemed pretty good this year and uh for what I could tell on the live streams it was a good time I got legitimately emotional watching Mr. Turnstile introduce his son's band and oh yeah yeah he said like they're all

they're all like my sons I'm wondering if that includes the British woman who's now in the band that replaced the guy who like tried to run him over with his car. Also, it's so fun how never enough has evolved from complete mystery rip off to I can't imagine any other song is the set opener from that on. That is really proof to me of how Turnstile have become like an arena rock band as opposed to a, you know, just like a hardcore band. Geese looked awesome. Joyce Manor sounded great. It's awesome to see them excited about the album they just released, which I don't know if that was always true with the last two. You want to talk about washed opinions. A couple of my friends who happened to be 40-something music writers, they said the rapture was awesome. They played at, like,

if we had this conversation, you thought like, wait, why are they playing at 9 o'clock? They're not that big. At Coachella, there's always going to be like acts at 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock that are off at the rock and fun zone tent where it is for all the 40-something people who don't want to see like Justin Bieber or the weekend. That's when I would say. Grindr Man or Swans. I also heard that Justin Bieber had maybe the biggest crowd in Coachella history. Oh yeah. Well, he did that YouTube

thing, which he was just streaming videos on stage and then singing along with it. He had that one thing like where he was singing along with his younger self. Yeah. Did you see that? Yeah, I thought that was really cool. Yeah, I mean, there was speculation. Again, we're getting into

the nefariousness of the music industry here, but that YouTube paid him to do that because YouTube was a big sponsor of Coachella. I mean, I love that idea of, hey, Justin, can you just, like, go on YouTube? Like, we'll give you $10 million. If you don't have any dancers or you don't have a band, just go on stage with a laptop and just search YouTube videos for, like, 90 minutes.

We'll give you $10 million. Yeah, to people, like, you know, the YouTube market penetration is very low amongst Coachella 10 years. I don't know. It's like, what is he using? What is the service? You can watch You can watch clips If it's always sunny

In Philadelphia anytime you want Wow, I kind of check this out You what? What's it? A tube? Wow, that's amazing. I thought you were going to talk about How it was like something

About a protest of his master's Being bought a la Taylor Swift But like I didn't hear the Hey, this is like YouTube industry plant type thing Well, because he owes all this money Because he canceled the tour a few years ago Oh yeah

So I think he owes tens of millions of dollars. So like what I had heard on a podcast, not that I'm, you know, meeting people in parking garages and they're telling me these secrets. But that he was doing Coachella as, I think he got paid for it, but maybe part of his payment went toward his debt. Like garnishing wages.

Like he got like suiting small claims court for holding onto a security deposit. Exactly. Bruno Mars is. story is way cooler, by the way. Yeah, yeah. The only time way cooler and Bruno Mars have ever appeared in the same sentence. So yeah, I don't know. I feel like Coachella, and this is obviously the opinion of a 48-year-old man, but I do think that they hit upon a good balance this year of stuff that appeals to, you know, 18 to 24-year-olds, which is obviously their core

demographic. And then all of these older indie groups that are like the classic rock bands on the on the set list now. You know, like, you know, you had the strokes. I think they went on at 11. They went on at 9 o'clock. I think they were like 8 o'clock and then Interpol came after them. No, it was no. It was 9 o'clock Coachella time because it was 11 o'clock for me. And then Interpol went on after. I was surprised that Interpol was had a higher billing than the strokes. Well, I mean, it's Southern California, which is close to Mexico, where Liverpool is somewhere like above the Beatles.

Yeah. Man, how great would it be if they got Carlos D. Beck? Oh, God. That's, I think he's, like, acting now. He's, like, one of the few people I know. He was always acting. Yeah, that's true. That's what was so good about him.

He was amazing, amazing bass player, too. I'm not diminishing his musicianship, but he just was so striking on stage. One of the few musicians who got out of the game and didn't go into becoming a therapist or like go to law school or work in a digital marketing job. He's just waiting around. Like this is sort of like the, you know, like the Morrissey Johnny Marr type thing. Like how much would you have to give Carlos? Actually, it's probably like Carlos D is like probably give an Interpol call like every couple of days.

Yeah, I don't know. It's like the guys in corn who got kicked out of the band. Yeah, I wonder what the relationship like is like there between like Paul Banks and San Foggerino and the guitar player. Who's the name? Daniel Kessler. There you go. Put some respect on the name. If they're calling up, if they've got Carlos D on a group chat, maybe they got like a fantasy basketball league together just to keep it real, keep it friendly behind the scenes.

They were very complimentary of him when I did that oral history of Turn on the Bright Lights in 2012. Yeah. Well, you have to be. Come on. Let's segue here to another band that if you are a conspiracy theorist, maybe you're wondering how this band has become so popular very quickly in 2026. And Gene de Poitrine. Have you heard of this band, Ian? Have you listened to them at all? Yeah, we talked about a little of them last week. And I'm wondering if you have gone to this small, internet concern I learned about a Coachella called YouTube to find out how to pronounce their actual name. Did I pronounce it correctly? I have no idea. Well, let me give a little background in this band. They are from Quebec. They formed in 2019. It's a duo. And it's composed of basically two anonymous musicians. They wear these oversized paper mache masks and black and white polka dot costumes. And they play this really complex

proggy combination of like math rock and experimental rock. They put out their first album called Volume 1 in 2024, which I guess started gaining traction in Canada, but they didn't really start to get known here in America until they were on K-E-X-P, the station in Seattle, that always posts these videos of bands performing in the studio. That video that they did at K-E-X-P,

ended up getting like millions upon millions of views and has turned them into this sort of viral success story and earlier this year they put out their second album volume two so you and i we have listened to this band uh and we're going to give them the yay or nay treatment so yay or nay on an jean de poitrine i'm sure i butcher the pronunciation of that where do you stand in So I'm thinking back to black, I oftentimes think of black middy, particularly when they started to ramp up the hype up the hype in 2019. Someone at Pitchfork called them Screen Saver Battles, which I don't think was really accurate, but it was pretty funny. And so when I saw these guys starting to get some hype, I'd describe them as TikTok Hela. And, you know, there could be worse things to go viral.

And I'm not mad that they have a gimmick because I think pretty much every band in this space has to have some. some sort of gimmick. You can think of, you know, Lightning Bolt, who's one of the more, I guess, legit Math Rock noise bands. You know, they were Risdy kids. They had masks and stuff. But all of this is,

just about everything in this realm is a thousand times better when you see it live, including Hella, including Lightning Bolt. And these guys as well, you know, the album itself doesn't really give me much to hold on to. But I think an interesting thing is that this has like an 89 on Metacritic right now, which is, I think the result of tradition. media trying to catch up with a viral trend. It reminds me of how you could read like veteran music critics comparing Little

Nas X to David Bowie and Little Richard. That's not, uh, that's not this band's fault. But, you know, I'm going to go with nay with the actual music. Because if I'm listening to instrumental math rock noise, I need it to make me feel like I can lift 500 pounds. So once again, I'm going back to battles mirrored. So you made very indie centric, uh, comparisons to this band. I'm going to go a little bit more old school with what they remind me of.

When I listen to this band, I was thinking about a lot of, you know, quote, weird music from the 90s, specifically Primus and Mr. Bungle or music that sort of in that lane. And also the fact that they're Canadian naturally makes me think of Rush. Because I think that progginess definitely goes back to that band. although Rush did occasionally write a pop song, and this band really has no pop appeal at all. And I have to say that there's something fun and encouraging about a band like this that doesn't seem to have really any kind of sort of recognizable commercial appeal to it, breaking through in the way that they have. Whether you like the music or not, they are a pretty weird band. So for this to break through, I think it's pretty interesting.

I do wonder, however, how much of that virality is related to them wearing these wacky costumes. Because there is, I think, an overarching trend with viral music videos where if you take a combination where you have someone who can play really well, obviously a really good musician, but that person being. like a person you wouldn't expect to play really well. Like, I don't know if you remember there was that young girl. She was like a preteen girl that was like a really good drummer. And she would always drum to classic rock songs and videos. And then you started seeing rock stars appear in her videos. Like I'm sure Dave Grohl was in a video.

Do you know who I'm talking about? I don't. Yes, totally, totally. Or there was like another video of like this guy wearing like a dog suit or some kind of like animal mascot suit who was behind the drums and he was like a really great drummer. Yeah. There's also the sewer singer as well. That's a big one now.

Right. Or you go on YouTube and you can see like women and bikinis that can play like Eddie Van Halen guitar licks while like ice skating in an ice arena, you know, things like that. I just think that that formula of, wow, this person, you wouldn't expect them to be a great musician. And here they are. That's just something that seems to go viral all the time. And I think that there's an element of that with this band where people are just like,

wow, this is kind of crazy that they're in the polka dot suits and they can play these insane time signatures. I think you're right that this kind of music is always better live. And I'm assuming that because I think the albums themselves, they don't really give me that whole, they don't give me that much to grab onto. I can appreciate the musicianship. but as songs they don't really stick with me on any real level I do question how longstanding this band's appeal will be I think that they're always going to have an audience

of people who love Prague Rock who love Math Rock but that audience normally doesn't number in the millions of people so my sense is that they're always going to have a cult following and maybe this is more of a fad right now. I'm going to say a nay just because musically doesn't do much for me, but it's a weak nay, and I will say yay in the sense that I appreciate that they've been able to get attention,

and that's something like this is broken through. That's a very mealy-mouthed, yay or nay. I understand. Yeah, or nay is supposed to be definitive, but I'm going to stick with that. Yeah, I think we will both agree, though, that with, you know, this stuff is better live. You just haven't really heard why known as Big Brown Beaver until you've seen it in a festival fairground at three in the afternoon.

That's true. Or actually, no, the best place to hear that is in your car on the way to, you know, 10th grade. Yeah, that's true. You know, Les Claypool, he has that band with Sean Lennon. Have you heard that? No, no. I thought, I know of his one with, like, he's got a band with, like, the guys from Tool, right? I'm sure he does, but he has this other band with, with Sean Lennon.

That I think it's actually pretty... They have an album with like a yellow cover that I enjoyed. And they have a new album... Is it like Van Morrison, like where so much of it is about like... I know Sean Lennon's got some views. Well, I think the... We should maybe talk about it. His album comes out in a few weeks and there is a concept to it, I think, that involving AI and...

Of course. Maybe some sort of authoritarianism or something. But I don't know. I'm just saying I'm not... I'm kind of in support of that side project. I think there's some cool songs there. But anyway, let's talk about another Praguegy record from a different part of the music world. And that is the new self-titled album from My New Band, Believe.

And this is the new project of a guy named Cameron Picton, who you may know from a very much cultishly adored English rock band called Black Midi, who broke up, I guess what, like a year or two ago? Feels like two years ago. And the most famous member of this band is the lead singer Giori Grip, who has established a very idiosyncratic solo career that I've seen... He's got like really hardcore fans online. Like the people who are into his stuff, really love his stuff.

And everyone else, I think, is maybe a little bit bewildered by it. It's very busy. tons of ideas, obviously a brilliant guy on many levels, and is clearly trying to do something that isn't for everybody. And that's something that we always support on this show, even if we may not personally respond to the execution every single time. Cameron picked in, I guess, was like the George Harrison of Black Middy, like the second songwriter. He'd have like two songs per record. And now he has this solo project called My New Band Believe.

And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this because this is a band I wrote about last week, I'm sorry, last month I should say, on my substack when they put out a song called Numerology. And I didn't really like that song very much. And basically my objections to it are related to what I was just talking about, feeling like this is a collective. where I just feel like they're trying to cram so many different musical ideas into the space of one song. And I really like it as an idea, but as music, it's just hard for me to listen to and enjoy.

So I wasn't sure if I would like this album. Well, the album comes out. This song isn't on the album. I'm curious about the decision there because this was like one of the singles that was released in advance of it. my assumption that the song would be on the album. But it's not on the album. And listening to the album, I understand why, because the record that he's put out

is this largely acoustic and very pastoral sounding record. It still has the progressive rock influence to it, but it's a gentler type of album. It's more of like a morning after record, whereas numerology to me felt like, you're out on the town on a Tuesday night doing Adderall. in a bathroom stall, like at two in the morning.

Not necessarily a bad way. Because that song has grown on me actually a little bit since I wrote about it. But this album, it's like a morning after that song type record. And listening to it, it really reminds me of like a grizzly bear record with the hit singles taken off of it. Or like if, if like, Daniel Rosson had just been given free reign to, push the music out in a very expansive direction. It also has a little bit of like a fiery furnaces quality, like if they made a record that was inspired directly by like Genesis from the early 70s. You know, so there's definitely that busyness going on. But to me it feels a little more contemplative

and melodic. And it's an album that I just find myself returning to. I also think that this band is very much an album band. And listening to a single doesn't really work. I think the way this album is constructed, one song blends into the next. It really feels like one piece of music that unfolds over the course of 38 minutes. And I would really encourage people to check this album out

and to sit in your living room with a cup of coffee or whatever and just give yourself like 40 minutes to listen to this record. You know, don't do anything else. Don't try to just sample one track. It's a real album, I think. And I think it's like one of the more interesting records to come out of the indie world so far in 2026. Yeah, I was a little skeptical towards it because with Black Middy, my favorite aspect of the band was watching live clips of, say, John L.

One of the songs where you just see the drummer just absolutely rip. And they go more in that direction than the I'm a weird whittle boy thing that Jordy Grie Greep seems to do. Like, it's very, it's very nominative determinism. If you, if your name is Jordy Grieb, you're going to make music. It sounds like the name Jordy Grie. And, yeah, just when I was reading about this record, it seemed a little bit on the same sort of path.

But this album really did win me over when I was making my grocery store run on Sunday morning. You mentioned I'm just going to throw more comparisons on top of the pile. Well, the first song, the first, you know, big song, Blinkvin' Night, totally grizzly bear, Daniel Rosson guitar. We've mentioned

Daniel Rossum and Carlos D, two of our indie cast, you know, fantasy draft band people. So, but along with the Wendy Eisenberg record that you brought up last week, I think you mentioned Jim O'Rourke as a comparison. I think there's that

element here as well. I will also bring up not fiery furnaces, but another mid-aughts Indycasts Hall of Favor in Archer Pruitt. That album, Wilderness, which came out in 2005. Awesome record. Very much in the same sort of vein. I enjoy this record. I appreciate parts of it. There's like some songs like Love Story that I'm just going to skip past because it's a little too arch, a little too British for me.

But, you know, this is an album that I'm probably going to end up of my year ed list because what they're doing is so distinct from the mean average of what indie rock sounds like right now. And this is a question we'll probably address in the big picture. When you think about this whole windmill scene, which is also called crankwave, it's a term I learned about today. Like black midi, black country, new roads, squid, Caroline last dinner party. I mean, in 10 years, are we going to look back on this as maybe the most significant movement and rock music of the past decade?

Well, I don't know if significant is the right word, but it does feel like a scene that will always, I think it has the potential to be something that people revisit and feel like they want to go back, like subsequent generations. You know, like an elephant six maybe type scene where elephant six was never the center of what was going on, but it does have legs in terms of people who just want. adventurous music that also has a melodic element to it. You know, younger people that are going to be drawn to that. So I could see it definitely having like a cult following for sure. The degree to which this will influence other kinds of music I'm a little skeptical about just because it is so idiosyncratic and it feels like it would be difficult to integrate what they're doing into other kinds of music.

I hope I'm wrong about that. I would actually push back on that because I think we are already seeing. like post-black midi young bands. The fact that it is so idiosyncratic makes it more likely to appeal to like other musicians and have them run with it, kind of like Elephant Six. Like there's, you know, the popularity of it, but there's also always going to be people who want to make like, you know, Beatles or Kinks records on whatever rudimentary equipment. So, yeah, I mean, I think we're, like, I think this is just sort of a thing that's just going to

keep going and going. It might not be at the center, but yeah, I mean, I don't love all this. I think definitely Black Middy, for sure, what you were saying. They've definitely seemed to have a lot of tentacles that are spreading out and that people are embracing. I think one thing I appreciate about this album is that a lot of the music from the scene, to me, and I'm saying this as an older person, so definitely foreground that bias. but it sounded adolescent in a way that I often found cringy.

Certainly, like, Black Country New Road is a band that I've had a difficult time with because it seems very English student type music, which, look, that's going to come up as negative. If you love that band, I totally understand it for 22, and you hear that and you love it. Because you are the audience for it. I'm not really the audience for it, probably. I do think that this record does seem more mature to me.

And I do think that it feels like an artist who has been doing this for a while and is coming into their own and maybe has better command of what they're doing without it feeling maybe as precious as a lot of the music from the scene tends to feel to me. I don't know if that makes any sense to you. Oh, it totally does. I certainly like it more than, you know, the, the Jordy Grie Grieb album or the most recent Black Country New Road. But yeah, it also makes me wonder

if we're ever going to talk about XTC on this podcast. I'm down to always talk about XTC. I mean, well, and they're a band too that has had different periods of their career be influential on indie rock.

I mean, like, yeah. We talk about the mid-2000s. Like, it was like the early Black Sea drums and wires, XTC. And now it's English settlement, murmur, up until, you know, skylarking.

It seems like that's now the era of XTC that's resonating, which is my favorite era of XTC, mid-80s XTC. Odd rung, bring it. You've now reached a part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk about

what we're into this week. Ian, why don't you go first? Yeah, this is looking like a classic Ian Steve recommendation Corner split this week. We are very back. So I say this, year because it feels true but man is there anything happening in emo right now i mean at least help me yeah i know right i don't know why you're asking me man you are the one to tell me that i think this is me more reaching out to

the indecast listener because um it feels like anything getting traction right now is either like post origami angel weed emo twinkly stuff or screamo but what if an album did both of those and it actually worked so this is happening with an album i's just uh hell on my radar this week from a band called garden ants. They are a young band from Stillwater, Oklahoma. I'm assuming they're Oklahoma State students. We love emo bands from unharalded college towns. And they have song titles like today was like 1009-11s. But they're finding that sweet spot between aggression and melody. There's the tapping piece, but there's also the kind of rawness to it. It's not overly clever, overly clever despite the titles

and it brings me back to what I would describe as pre-Mele dog leg. Nothing's touched melee in the past six years but there's the potential for this band to possibly get there. Plus it was produced by Jack Shirley who you might remember from Deaf Heaven Sunbather, Joyce Manners of all these things

I'll soon grown tired and a hundred of other really great albums in this realm. So you know it's going to sound good. Worth keeping an eye on Garden and Ants Workhorse. All right. Well, like you said, I'm going to go in the opposite direction with my recommendation corner. But before I get to my album, I just have to mention some self-promotion here. This week I announced my new book, which I've talked about, I think I referenced it already on this show.

But I have a book coming out, September 8th. It's called Is This It, The Never-ending Rise of the Strokes and Rock and Roll. And like the title says, it's about the strokes, but it's also about rock bands. in the 21st century, how they've evolved or how they've de-evolved in that time. If you like my writing, if you like what we talk about on this show, I think you'll like the book. You can pre-order it now as a hardcover, as an audiobook, or as an e-book, wherever you buy books. And yeah, I don't know. I'm sure I'll talk about it more going forth here. I should just say people who have already pre-ordered, I looked on Amazon this morning, it is the number one bestseller.

in rock music books right now. So thank you for that. Five months ahead of the book going on sale. Let's keep it there at number one for five months. Can we do it? I think we can. All right, enough self-promotion. I want to talk about a band called The Lines

and their album called The Setup. And this is a project by a cult hero singer-songwriter from Portland by the name of Willie Volatan. And I feel like he's someone where, if you know his name, you're probably a fan. In the 90s and the 2000s, he fronted an alt-country band called Richmond Fontaine. And he also had this parallel career, and still does, as a novelist. So very literary type songwriting, someone who, you know, if you are into Craig Finn,

if you are into John Darniel or someone like Patterson Hood, he would be totally up your alley. even though he's an artist that's never really achieved any of the indie fame of those artists. This new record that he has that came out earlier this month, again called The Setup, is very much in line with the kind of albums that he makes. There's like an overarching story. There's characters. It really feels like a 70s character study, like a five easy pieces crossed with like the Friends of Eddie Coil type film noir. downbeat, sad, melancholy.

If you recognize any of these cinematic references, this album will be for you. Musically, it's very much in this sort of country soul vein, like a lot of electric piano, like warm guitar tones, pedal steel. And it's just a great vibe. And similar to my new band, Believe, this is like a complete record. It feels like something you need to listen to from beginning to end. to really get the full experience to have the full satisfaction. But I think if you do that, you know, just have a double feature with my new band believe,

this DeLines record, and then you can like do the Emo record after that as a chaser, as you're doing yard work or something. I think it will be a great experience. Again, the band is called the DeLines, D-E-Lines. The band is called, sorry, the album is called The Setup. That about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week.