After quarantine set in, it wasn’t long before Adrianne Lenker got to work on some more music, opting for a solo project since she was unable to see her bandmates. While Big Thief apparently were able to reconvene and record a new album over the summer, Lenker has shared the result of her musical exploration at the beginning of quarantine, two new solo LPs titled 'songs' and 'instrumentals.' In this episode, Steven and Ian dig into the lore surrounding Lenker and her band Big Thief, as well as their prolific and acclaimed output over the last few years. The conversation centers around one central question: is Big Thief really a band or is it just a front for Lenker?

The episode’s second half is focused on Fake It Flowers, the debut album from 20-year-old rocker Beabadoobee. With catchy songs and big choruses, Hyden argues that Beabadoobee’s debut album solidifies her role in the modern indie rock canon as Stone Temple Pilots, where Soccer Mommy is Nirvana and Clairo is Pearl Jam.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is looking to the ’90s and plugging Ida’s 1996 album 'I Know About You,' while Hyden is digging 'Optimisme,' the new album from Songhoy Blues.

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Last week, Steven tweeted a call for questions from listeners that would inform the podcast's new episode, the first entry in a new feature on the show. The curious responses to Hyden's call were wide-reaching, ranging from questions the relevance of Foo Fighters in today's musical landscape to the realistic influence of alternative streaming platforms like Bandcamp. 

Most interestingly, however, one listener requested for Hyden and co-host Ian Cohen to reveal their guilty pleasures, or "bands that you're embarrassed you like," while another was wondering about the pandemic's lasting impact on the music industry and whether we will ever see a live show again. These prompts lead to a discussion revolving around the current state of the music industry and what we can expect from the weeks and months to come. Of course, an episode of Indiecast wouldn't be complete without touching upon some of today's biggest indie stars like Phoebe Bridgers and Tame Impala. 

In this week's recommendation corner, Cohen is praising the mid-aughts post punk outfit The Stills and Hyden is praising Brian Eno and 'Cuttin' Grass,' the new album from Sturgill Simpson.

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Released only a few weeks after Radiohead's 'Kid A,' Linkin Park's debut studio album 'Hybrid Theory' turns 20 this month. It featured four major singles ("One Step Closer", "In the End", "Crawling" and "Papercut") and has sold 27 million albums worldwide since its release, making it the best-selling debut album since Guns N' Roses' 1987 debut 'Appetite for Destruction,' and the single best-selling rock album of the 21st century. 

The record's success marked a transition moment to the mainstream for a type of rock music that was pioneered by bands like Korn and Deftones. With the emergence of nu metal came a through line that Linkin Park was able to capitalize upon, one that continues today with Machine Gun Kelly's new album 'Tickets To My Downfall,' which is currently sitting at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart. In this episode, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen trace the lasting influence of nu metal and big, fun chart-topping rock music. 

Recommendation Corner: Field Medic's 'Floral Prince' and "The Shining But Tropical," a beautiful new single from Wild Pink.

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It's hard to believe in retrospect, but many music critics in the early '90s assumed that bands who became popular after Nirvana could never last. After the success of Radiohead's "Creep," they were roped in with other bands that fizzled out after their one-hit-wonder, with many turning their noses up at the somewhat nerdy alternative rock outfit. Needless to say, those estimations couldn't have been further from the truth.

In many ways, Radiohead's fourth album 'Kid A' was the culmination of the band putting their alternative rock era behind them, moving toward the more esoteric, dream-like sound that we've come to know and love. Two decades after its release, Steven and Ian look back on the iconic album.

In this week's Recommendation Corner, Hyden is singing the praises of Bartees Strange's debut album 'Live Forever' while Cohen is plugging 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' and 'Second Toughest in the Infants,' the first two albums from British electronica band Underworld. 

Pick up Steven's new book 'This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's 'Kid A' And The Beginning Of The 21st Century' here and sign up for the Indie Mixtape newsletter here.

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On the new episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen dissect the new albums by two very successful indie acts who originated in the aughts: Sufjan Stevens’ 'The Ascension' and Fleet Foxes’ 'Shore'. While the rollout of 'The Ascension' took on a more traditional approach, the arrival of 'Shore' came as a surprise, with the release timed perfectly to coincide with the autumnal equinox on September 22nd at 9:31am EST.

While Hyden was initially resistant to Sufjan Stevens’ early work and Cohen felt similarly about Fleet Foxes’ early work, both have come around to the recent releases from each respective artist. 'The Ascension' is some of Stevens’ darkest and angriest music to date, and 'Shore' represents Fleet Foxes at their most attainable and melodic.

In this week’s recommendation corner, we have the new self-titled album from Teenage Halloween and the long-awaited new Deftones album Ohms. 

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This week, Steven and Ian make the argument that Deerhunter might be the last great American indie band. It’s an interesting claim, but one that makes more and more sense as the discussion continues. It all starts when the duo is digging deep into the band’s 2010 album Halcyon Digest in celebration of its tenth anniversary, when they reveal that Deerhunter is the last band in the true sense of the word: an entity that exists as a collective, rather than an identity that’s actually driven by one person.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, we have Lomelda’s impressive new album 'Hannah' and Jeff Tweedy’s forthcoming book 'How To Write One Song.'

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On the new episode of 'Indiecast,' Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen reflect on twenty years of Cameron Crowe's 'Almost Famous,' using their background as real-life music critics to examine the accuracy of the central plot (there is literally no way that a publicist would let you spend several weeks on the road with a band for a profile), the depiction of Lester Bangs, and whether Stillwater is actually even a good band at all. Check out Hyden's full essay about the film here. 

In this week's Recommendation Corner, Steven is spreading the good word about William Tyler's new album 'New Vanitas,' while Ian is pointing toward 'I'll Figure This Out,' the latest from Milwaukee's Barely Civil. 

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With most of the year behind us, it's time to look forward to what we are expecting from the remaining months of 2020. In our fall music preview episode, Steven and Ian discuss upcoming projects from artists like A.G. Cook, Sufjan Stevens, Bartees Strange, Mary Lattimore, Matt Berninger, Deftones, Lana Del Rey, Idles, Touche Amore, Beabadoobee, and Respire.

In addition to the albums Steven and Ian are looking forward to this fall, this week's Recommendation Corner is dedicated to Bill Callahan's 'Gold Record' and the 2002 film '24 Hour Party People,' starring Steve Coogan.

Check out our full list of anticipated fall albums here: https://uproxx.com/music/most-anticipated-albums-fall-2020/

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On the new episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen look back to 2013, a pivotal year in recent indie history that saw the arrival of some of the biggest names in the genre, and the staying power of some of its veterans. 

2013 brought the emergence of artists like Disclosure, Lorde, The 1975 and Haim. Vampire Weekend also dropped their seminal LP 'Modern Vampires Of The City' and Sky Ferreira finally delivered 'Night Time, My Time.' Back in our first episode about Arcade Fire's 'The Suburbs,' we noted how that album helped to mark the end of the aughts. In this episode, Hyden and Cohen declare 2013 to be the official beginning of the 2010s, with many artists still in the collective conscience today. 

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Bright Eyes and The Killers are both back with new albums. For Bright Eyes, 'Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was' is their first album in nearly a decade; for The Killers, 'Imploding The Mirage' is their first since the underwhelming 'Wonderful Wonderful' in 2017. On this week's episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen sink their teeth into the new albums from these legacy indie acts, while recalling their respective careers and seeing where the new work fits into their catalogues.

This week's recommendations: Now It's Overheard, The Good Life, and two new singles from Father John Misty.

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