Thirty-two songs across two and a half hours: shoegaze, dream-pop, trip-hop and downtempo, with a few that slip between all of them. Slowdive, Lush, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Deerhunter, Khruangbin, Thievery Corporation, Everything But The Girl, UNKLE and LTJ Bukem, alongside The Bilinda Butchers, Tummyache, Glazyhaze and Oeil. One opening song, five sets of six with a word after each, one to close. Press escape any time.
The Submarines are the Los Angeles duo of Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti, then married — lush, string-and-synth chamber pop; Hazard is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter and later became president of his literary estate, and their songs soundtracked Apple iPhone ads. Amp Live is the producer half of Bay Area hip-hop duo Zion I, and in 2007 he reworked Radiohead’s In Rainbows into Rainydayz Remixes — Warner/Chappell sent a cease-and-desist, then a fan campaign led to a settlement letting him give it away free, and Wired named it its best free download of the week in February 2008. This remix comes from Honeysuckle Remixes (2009, Nettwerk). As of 2025 The Submarines were on hiatus.
Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt reinvented themselves from folk-jazz-pop into trip-hop and drum-and-bass with Walking Wounded (1996, Virgin) — a genuine late-career rebirth. Watt made the album not long after nearly dying of Churg-Strauss syndrome, a rare autoimmune illness, and later wrote the acclaimed memoir Patient about it; critics still read the record as a document of survival, not despair. Thorn has written several books of her own, and the pair reunited musically in 2023 with Fuse after decades apart.
Karen and Don Peris, who met in a 1980 Catholic-school production of Godspell and later married, lead this Lancaster, Pennsylvania trio with bassist Mike Bitts — thirteen studio albums moving from ’80s alt-pop toward the hushed, intimate dream-folk of Small Planes (2001, What Are Records?). Their earlier song “Bright as Yellow” was picked by NASA as a real astronaut wake-up call aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-124 in 2008 — a rare honor for a band this unassuming. Their thirteenth album, Midwinter Swimmers, came out in 2024.
Teen Daze is Jamison Isaak, a prolific Canadian producer from Abbotsford, BC, who emerged out of the 2010 chillwave scene and has spent a decade and a half drifting through house, ambient and indie-pop textures. All of Us, Together came out in 2012 on Lefse Records. His 2021 album Interior won the Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year in 2023 — Canada’s top music honor.
Fiona Apple was eighteen when Tidal (1996, Work/Columbia) came out, its songs written through her teens and drawn straight from her journals. Tidal won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, via “Criminal,” and it opened the door for a generation of uncompromising singer-songwriters after her. She has remained fiercely independent since, including 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which won two Grammys.
Atlanta’s Deerhunter, fronted by the prolific Bradford Cox, formed in 2001 blending shoegaze, garage and glam. Halcyon Digest (2010, 4AD) is widely considered their high-water mark, landing near the top of 2010 year-end lists, including No.3 at Pitchfork. Their most recent album is Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2019), and the band has been on hiatus since its late-2019 tour, with members pursuing side projects.
Troubleman is a 2000s alias of English producer Mark Pritchard, better known for the celebrated ambient album 76:14 as Global Communication; Nina Miranda is the Brazilian-English singer who fronted trip-hop group Smoke City. Time Out of Mind (2004, Far Out Recordings) is Pritchard’s Brazilian-tinged electro-funk collaboration with several vocalists. He has since recorded under his own name as well — including Tall Tales, a 2025 Warp Records album made jointly with Thom Yorke.
Blockhead — Tony Simon, from Manhattan — is best known as Aesop Rock’s primary beatmaker, but Music By Cavelight (2004, Ninja Tune) was his solo debut, noticeably smoother and more melodic than his rap-adjacent work — real range beyond making beats for other MCs. He released two albums in 2024, Luminous Rubble and Mortality Is Lit!
Rob Garza and Eric Hilton built Thievery Corporation around Washington DC’s Eighteenth Street Lounge in 1995, blending dub, bossa nova, Indian classical and acid jazz; “Sweet Tides” features vocalist LouLou Ghelichkhani. Radio Retaliation (2008, ESL Music) earned a Grammy nomination for its packaging, and the duo have put their platform to use supporting the UN World Food Programme. They released Midnight Ragas in 2025.
LTJ Bukem — pronounced BOOK-em, from the Hawaii Five-O catchphrase “book ’em, Danno” — is a classically trained pianist turned foundational atmospheric-jungle DJ, and his label Good Looking Records defined the melodic, jazzy wing of drum & bass through the Logical Progression series. Journey Inwards (2000, Good Looking) is his debut solo album and reached UK #40; AllMusic called it “an album of pure brilliance” that showed his production still growing a decade into his career.
Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase’s NYC trio traded scrappy garage-punk for synths on It’s Blitz! (2009, Interscope), to wide acclaim; “Skeletons” was the album’s third single. The songwriting held up well enough that Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men covered it in 2013 — a nice marker of a song’s staying power beyond its own fanbase.
UNKLE is English DJ James Lavelle’s revolving-cast project, launched out of his legendary Mo’Wax label and made famous by 1998’s Psyence Fiction with DJ Shadow. “Invasion” (from 2003’s Never, Never, Land, Mo’Wax) features Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja on vocals — one of a guest list across three decades that’s also included Thom Yorke, Ian Brown and Michael Kiwanuka, real testament to how much the music community trusts Lavelle’s ear. Their most recent release is the 2022 mixtape Rōnin II.
Submotion Orchestra is a seven-piece from Leeds fusing dubstep, soul, jazz and dub around singer Ruby Wood, formed in 2009 out of an Arts Council-funded event at York Minster. Fragments (2012, Exceptional Records) is their second album; “All Yours”, from their 2011 debut Finest Hour, was sampled by Bryson Tiller on “Right My Wrongs”, which went six-times platinum — genuine mainstream reach flowing out of a Leeds jazz-dubstep collective. They released the album Passed Me By in May 2026.
Tummyache is Soren Bryce, a multi-instrumentalist from Amarillo, Texas, whose sound has drifted from noisier post-punk textures toward atmospheric songwriting. “Interstate Dr”, released as a single in May 2026, was written in the wake of losing her father. Her earlier solo work was strong enough to be crowdfunded past $10,000 and premiered on NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Pretz is a solo ambient-electronic side project of British jazz pianist Neil Cowley, a classically trained prodigy who performed Shostakovich at Queen Elizabeth Hall at age ten and later played sideman for Brand New Heavies and Zero 7 before leading the BBC Jazz Award-winning Neil Cowley Trio. Soundcastles (2006, I Label) is his textural detour from jazz-trio work — and his session credits include piano on Adele’s 19 and 21. The Trio reunited in 2024 for the album Entity.
Reading’s Slowdive, led by Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, made Souvlaki (1993, Creation) despite being savaged by the UK press at the time — it’s now considered a genre-defining shoegaze classic. Brian Eno spent a few days recording with the band, adding keyboards and treatments to two tracks he is also credited as co-writing, a rare direct endorsement from one of ambient music’s founding figures. The band disbanded in 1995, reunited in 2014, and released everything is alive in 2023.
Doves — Jimi Goodwin and twins Jez and Andy Williams, from Manchester — began as the dance act Sub Sub until a devastating 1996 studio fire destroyed their equipment; Jez Williams later described the choice to carry on as “quite a liberating feeling,” and the band moved toward the atmospheric, elegiac sound that opens Lost Souls (2000, Heavenly), which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Their sixth album, Constellations for the Lonely, followed in 2025.
Polly Jean Harvey, from Bridport, Dorset, is one of British music’s most restless artists, reinventing her sound album to album; Is This Desire? (1998, Island) marked her shift from raw guitar rock into atmospheric electronics. She’s the only artist ever to win the Mercury Prize twice, in 2001 and 2011 — the same restless craft on display here. Her tenth album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, followed in 2023.
Khruangbin — the name is Thai for “airplane,” pronounced KRUNG-bin — are Laura Lee, Mark Speer and DJ Johnson, a Houston trio blending Thai funk, dub and soul into an instantly recognizable groove; Leon Bridges is the Fort Worth soul singer they paired with across the Texas Sun and Texas Moon EPs. More than a decade into their career, Khruangbin were nominated for Best New Artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards — a rare, well-earned late arrival.
Steve Kilbey’s Australian band The Church, formed in Sydney in 1980, broke through with Starfish (1988) and its enduring single “Under the Milky Way,” which a 2008 readers’ poll voted the best Australian song of the previous twenty years and which was performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the 2006 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony — a song that grew past indie radio into something like a national anthem. Kilbey, the sole remaining founding member since 2020, has led the band on through Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars (2024).
Men I Trust — Emmanuelle Proulx, Jessy Caron and Dragos Chiriac, from Quebec City — self-release everything themselves and have built a devoted following on hazy, hypnotic melody alone. Respected rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith licensed one of her images for their Untourable Album cover at a steep discount, saying she did it “for the love of music” — real critical respect for a fully DIY band. In 2025 they released the companion albums Equus Asinus and Equus Caballus.
NYC duo Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener spent the ’90s blending shoegaze guitar wash with trip-hop rhythm and dub bass; Beat (1996, Kranky) is where that sound peaked. Critic Simon Reynolds credited them with essentially inventing a distinctively American strand of post-rock — a huge, enveloping sound from just two people. The band has not recorded or performed since its final album, Lushlife (2000).
The first of Khruangbin and Leon Bridges’ two Texas collaborations, Texas Sun (2020, Dead Oceans) paired the Houston trio’s laid-back instrumental groove with Bridges’ Fort Worth soul voice. Khruangbin, who formed in 2010, went on to a Best New Artist nomination at the 2025 Grammy Awards, remarkable recognition fourteen years in.
LA dream-pop/psych act West Indian Girl, built around Robert James and Francis Ten, released their hazy, Madchester-tinged self-titled debut on Astralwerks in 2004. Vocalist Mariqueen Maandig went on to co-found How to Destroy Angels with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails — real industry pedigree in this act’s lineage.
Glazyhaze are a shoegaze quartet from Venice, Italy — Irene, Lorenzo, Francesco and Vsevolod — whose 2023 debut Just Fade Away mixes dark atmosphere with dreamy melody. They have shared stages with Trentemøller, Hater and Film School — serious peer validation for a young band. Their second album, Sonic, followed in March 2025, and they toured Europe and the UK in 2026.
London’s Lush — Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson on guitars and vocals, with Phil King and Chris Acland — were among the era’s most respected shoegaze bands and played the 1992 Lollapalooza tour; Split (1994, 4AD) sits right at the crossing of shoegaze and Britpop. Acland died in 1996 and the band formally split in 1998, reuniting briefly in 2015–16 before disbanding again after a final show in November 2016.
Oeil (French for “eye”) are a Tokyo shoegaze act built around vocalist Satoko Takaoka and guitarist-producer Takafumi Hibino, who debuted with the Urban Twilight EP in 2007 on Submarine Records. Far Out Magazine named it one of the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time in 2019 — a strong critical nod for a self-driven Tokyo project. They released Dream within a Dream in 2025.
LA dream-pop act The Meeting Places, formed in 2001 around Chase Harris, channeled early-’90s dream pop on their debut Find Yourself Along The Way (2003, Words on Music), produced by Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart — genuine indie pedigree behind the boards. They played SXSW and the SF Noise-Pop Fest before going quiet; the album was remastered for a vinyl reissue in 2024.
Melbourne’s The Paper Kites, fronted by Sam Bentley, built Roses (2021) as a guest-vocalist concept album, with Julia Stone of Angus & Julia Stone featured here. Their breakout single “Bloom” went platinum in the US and also certified in the UK, Canada, Italy and Denmark — rare crossover success for an Australian folk act. Their seventh album, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, followed in January 2026.
Mark Kozelek, formerly of Red House Painters, leads this San Francisco quartet; Ghosts of the Great Highway (2003, Jetset) is the acclaimed debut LP, rated five stars by AllMusic — a critical consensus around Kozelek’s songwriting that’s held for over two decades. “Duk Koo Kim” is named for the Korean boxer Kim Duk-koo, whose death from a 1982 title-fight injury led boxing authorities to shorten championship bouts from fifteen rounds to twelve; Kozelek has a recurring habit of naming songs after boxers, as with “Salvador Sanchez” on the same album.