Welcome to March! This week we’ve got two compilations that both feature Fontaines DC, plus a full album remix from Daniel Avery, a fantastic EP from one of LA’s best new bands, a lost album (sort of) from Squeeze, and the latest from Swedish dreampop band Hater.
For more of this week’s new album, head to Notable Releases for coverage of the latest from Shabaka, Sturgill Simpson‘s Johnny Blue Skies alter ego, Bosse-de-Nage, Temple of the Void, and more.
If last month feels like a blur, the Indie Basement Best Songs & Albums of February 2026 roundup is here to help.
In other news, Seefeel announced their first album in 15 years, and Aldous Harding’s fifth album is on the way this spring. And is it just me or does the lineup of the 2026 Green Man festival feel especially Indie Basement-esque?
You can also hear me talk about some of this week’s releases and other stuff on the 3/6 episode of the BV Weekly podcast.
Head below for this week’s reviews…
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Various Artists – HELP(2) (War Child UK)
From Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines DC and Pulp to Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodrigo, HELP(2) gathers an all-star cast to benefit children in war-torn countries
Thirty years ago, many of the biggest names in the UK indie/alternative world (plus Johnny Depp) recorded new songs for HELP, a compilation album that benefited the War Child charity. It was a high-concept record, with artists given just 24 hours to record a song and deliver the finished product, and the album was released by the end of the week. Now, with wars raging all over the globe, War Child have put together another HELP to benefit children caught in the line of fire.
This time the process worked a little differently, with producer James Ford coordinating a week of sessions at London’s Abbey Road Studios and assembling a lineup of artists that rivals — if not betters — the original compilation. With so many talented people in the studio at the same time, including a bunch of ringer musicians helping out everywhere (Johnny Marr, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, Blur’s Graham Coxon), there’s a lot more cross-pollination on HELP(2). There were also plenty of children on hand, singing in a backing choir and interviewing the musicians for a documentary by Oscar-winning director (and ’90s music-video innovator) Jonathan Glazer.
With Ford overseeing the whole thing, there’s a little more cohesion here, though it’s still a sprawling collection (23 songs!) featuring originals, covers, surprising collaborations, and a few tracks not recorded at Abbey Road. Speaking of surprises: Oasis — whose “Fade Away” opened the original HELP — contribute a live version of “Acquiesce,” included on a bonus 7″ with the double-LP vinyl.
Pretty much everyone Ford has worked with over the last decade is here, including longtime collaborators Arctic Monkeys, who kick off HELP(2) with “Opening Night,” their most rock-oriented song in ages and the closest they’ve ever come to sounding like Steely Dan (I’m here for it). There’s also Pulp’s “Begging for Change,” which nearly appeared on last year’s More and might be the most rocking song they’ve ever recorded — glammy and gritty, with patented Jarvis Cocker sexy whispering and spelling, not to mention the best “Hoo! Ha!” exclamations since Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome.” Both are fantastic.
Other highlights include Ezra Collective and Greentea Peng’s dubby “Helicopters” (they should consider continuing this collaboration); Anna Calvi, Ellie Rowsell, Nilüfer Yanya & Dove Ellis’ swaying, swooning “Sunday Light”; Black Country, New Road’s lightly bouncy, ’70s-ish “Strangers”; and Portishead singer Beth Gibbons’ delicate take on The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning.”
Elsewhere, Fontaines D.C. deliver a low-key but powerful cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” while frontman Grian Chatten teams up with Damon Albarn and Kae Tempest — along with Marr, Utley, Ezra Collective, and that children’s choir — for the swaying original “Fires,” which Ford calls the album’s centerpiece. Geese frontman Cameron Winter goes full chamber pop on “Warning,” surrounded by strings; beabadoobee covers Elliott Smith’s “Say Yes”; Depeche Mode deliver a fiery version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Universal Soldier” and make it their own; and Foals offer their first new music in four years with the understated “When the War is Finally Over.”
What else? Big Thief’s “Relive, Redie” and Wet Leg’s “Obvious” feel cut from the same folky cloth, as do Arlo Parks’ “Nothing I Could Hide” and Sampha’s “Naboo.” There’s so much on this album that a review can start to feel like a list, and I’m not going to go through every song — Olivia Rodrigo’s cover of The Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love” is nice but uninspired — but there’s a lot to dig into here. It all supports a worthy cause, and there’s more than enough great material to justify actually buying it.
Sadly, the cause it supports remains just as relevant 30 years later. HELP(2) if you can.
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Various Artists – Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man Soundtrack (Milan Records)
The Peaky Blinders sonic universe expands with another killer soundtrack featuring members of Fontaines DC, Amyl, and Lankum
Gritty historical drama series Peaky Blinders has always had cool people working on its soundtrack. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” has been the theme song from the start — with different versions across the seasons performed by PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys, Iggy Pop, Pete Yorn, Jarvis Cocker, Snoop Dogg, and others. The score has been created by The Hours’ Antony Genn and Martin Slattery and Anna Calvi, and the soundtracks have featured songs by The White Stripes, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, and more.
Peaky Blinders has now leapt to the big screen with feature film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, which is out in theaters now and hits Netflix on March 20. The soundtrack is out as well, featuring a score by Genn and Slattery, who brought in Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O’Connell to help on a few pieces and recruited some very cool singers to contribute. Chief among them is O’Connell’s bandmate Grian Chatten, who sings on dark ballads “Puppet” and “Black Dahlia,” the creepy “Opium Dream,” the towering “Medusa,” and a cover of Massive Attack’s “Angel” that is pretty terrific.
There are actually two Mezzanine covers on The Immortal Man soundtrack, the other being the iconic “Teardrop,” here sung by Irish/Cornish group Girl In the Year Above. Amyl & The Sniffers’ Amy Taylor also appears on the rambunctious “Nobody’s Son,” which I can only imagine soundtracking a fight scene. Nick Cave, meanwhile, has recorded a new heavy, orchestral version of “Red Right Hand.”
There are also a few needle drops on the soundtrack, including Fontaines D.C.’s “A Hero’s Death” and “Romance,” Mclusky’s “People Person,” and Lankum’s eerie “The Hunting Wren.” If you cherry-pick the new material here, you’ve got a real mood piece of an album that works whether you’ve seen an episode of Peaky Blinders or not.
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Squeeze – Trixies (Love Records / BMG)
Difford & Tilbrook unearth some of their earliest songs — and they still sparkle on this concept album that hit the studio 50 years later
Squeeze’s debut album arrived in 1978, but frontmen Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook’s songwriting partnership goes back even further. For Trixies, they’ve unearthed songs from the very beginning of their collaboration. In fact, this is a shelved concept album about a fictitious club and its inhabitants that Difford and Tilbrook once deemed too ambitious to pull off.
“These are very much the same songs that we wrote then,” Tilbrook says. “The only difference is that now I can teach the songs to the rest of the band. Back then, I didn’t even know what the names of the chords were!”
It’s fascinating to hear how Difford and Tilbrook’s signature style was already present in these 13 songs: complex melodies that nonetheless sound effortless, wry humor, and their distinctive vocal harmonies. You can also tell this material dates from the ’70s — there’s a glammy sheen and a little theatrical prog in the melodies, not to mention an earth-toned leisure-suit seediness running through these tales of barflies, wannabe pop stars, and other ne’er-do-wells.
Smartly, they treat the production and arrangements as if the album had actually been made during the Me Decade, complete with vintage keyboards and era-appropriate studio effects. The performances follow suit: there’s a youthful energy and playfulness that mark Squeeze’s best records — and Trixies belongs among them.
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Dutch Interior – It’s Glass EP (Fat Possum)
Dutch Interior distill their dusty influences into a perfect 18-minute EP
Dutch Interior’s third album, Moneyball, was one of my favorites of 2025, and a year later they’re back with this EP that might be the best thing they’ve done to date. This is the first time they’ve made a record outside their own LA studio, traveling to San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios, where The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, and many others have recorded. This sextet — five of whom write and sing — waste no time here: It’s Glass is a perfectly conceived and sequenced 18 minutes featuring five great songs that flow seamlessly into one another and distill their dusty, disparate influences.
“It’s so silly writing love songs while we teeter at that edge,” Jack Nugent sings on opener “Ground Scores,” a spare, twangy number that finds him over the moon during the end times and has Dutch Interior sounding more than a little like Summerteeth-era Wilco — living up to the comparison. It’s followed by the EP’s best song, the Conner Reeves-sung “Go Fuck Yourself,” a pretty-poison takedown of vapid LA culture that sits firmly in ’70s piano-man territory, a la Harry Nilsson. When Reeves sings “Go fuck yourself and all your cool friends too” in a featherlight falsetto, it’s perfection: “The city’s a bus / I’ll be road kill by dusk.”
It’s Glass also features two wonderfully atmospheric slowcore ballads: Davis Stewart’s “Say Anything,” which plays with dubby production touches, and Noah Kurtz’s “Play the Song,” another Tweedy-style earworm. It closes with Conner Reeves’ heartbreaking “I Have No Clue.” EPs are by nature meant as a showcase for an artist, but this one feels like Dutch Interior fully coming into their own.
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Daniel Avery – Tremor: Midnight Versions (Domino)
Daniel Avery pushes 2025’s guitar-centric Tremor back onto the dancefloor with this full album remix
Last year, techno innovator Daniel Avery released Tremor, an album where he let the heavy rock influences of his teenage years infiltrate his sound, resulting in a record that played like a late-’90s fever dream — a lost entry in the Spawn soundtrack. It was a cool swerve, showcasing another side of Avery and the talents of many guest vocalists (Walter Schreifels, Alison Mosshart, Cecile Believe, bdrmm, Yeule).
Those who prefer his more purely electronic work [raises hand] will probably find this even more appealing. Avery has remixed the whole thing into “Midnight Versions” that are darker, clubbier, and more sultry. It’s still very ’90s, but now songs like “Neon Pulse,” “Rapture in Blue,” and “A Silent Shadow” are driven by waves of synths, undulating bass, and breakbeats, giving the album a feel closer to 808 State, Underworld, The Orb, Orbital, and Massive Attack. I am glad both Tremors exist, but Avery’s music is better suited to the late night world.
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Hater – Mosquito (Fire)
Hater turn heartbreak into beautifully bruised indie rock on their fourth album
“I don’t think we strove to write love songs really,” says Hater’s Caroline Landahl. “I was surprised when we stood with a whole bunch of them.” The 11 tracks on this Malmö, Sweden quartet’s fourth album aren’t squishy odes to a crush but thorny, rip-the-Band-Aid-off portraits of the power — and damage — love can do, especially when things go sour.
“I’d like to fall again soon,” Caroline sings on the melancholic “Angel Cupid,” continuing the thought with, “So that my favourite songs can all feel as deep as they did back then.” This is also a song where the title is rhymed with “fucking stupid.”
Despite having a name better suited to a death metal band (or a grunge supergroup), Hater make very pretty indie rock, though it carries a caustic undercurrent with elements of dark dreampop and ’90s alt-rock. Take “This Guy?,” powered by a thick bassline that would’ve been right at home on a Smashing Pumpkins record in 1993 but is used here for more delicate ends. Most of the songs favor minor chords, adding another layer of gloomy heartbreak.
The melodies — sung in Caroline’s crystal-clear voice — can be sweet, but like the pest of the title, these love songs draw blood.
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Indie Basement Classic: Various Artists – HELP (Go!, 1995)
A snapshot of 1995’s UK music scene, made in 24 hours and benefitting a worthy cause
With HELP(2) out today, it seemed like a good time to revisit the original Help album. Here’s an expanded version of my review from the Best Britpop Albums of 1995 list:
Some of the biggest artists in the UK and Ireland — including most of the Britpop elite — contributed new songs to this high-concept benefit album aiding the War Child charity. The concept was inspired by John Lennon’s “Instant Karma,” the idea that art should be released to the world as soon as it’s made. So 20 artists went into the studio on September 4, 1995, and the album was in shops just five days later.
There are plenty of Britpop highlights: Radiohead’s “Lucky,” which would appear two years later on OK Computer; a terrific acoustic version of Oasis b-side “Fade Away” featuring Johnny Depp and Kate Moss; Suede covering Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding” (also famously recorded by Robert Wyatt); Blur in playful instrumental mode on “Eine kleine Lift Musik”; Salad and Specials frontman Terry Hall covering “Dream a Little Dream of Me”; and The Charlatans tackling Sly & The Family Stone’s “Time for Livin’.”
Outside of Britpop, 1995 was also a golden era for UK electronic music and it’s well represented here. Portishead offered up “Mourning Air,” their first new music since Dummy, which would appear two years later on their self-titled second album. Massive Attack follow on HELP with a newly recorded alternate version of “Karmacoma” without Tricky, retitled “Fake the Aroma.” Orbital contributed an early version of “Adnan’s,” which would appear a year later on In Sides. Neneh Cherry and producer Trout soar on “1, 2, 3, 4, 5,” Stereo MCs — one of the most underrated groups of the ’90s — contribute the groovy acid-jazz jam “Sweetest Truth (Show No Fear),” and The KLF’s Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty released their first music in four years as The One World Orchestra with a cover of The Magnificent Seven theme.
The biggest deal at the time was a version of The Beatles’ “Come Together” by The Smokin’ Mojo Filters (aka Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher, and Paul Weller), but the secret best song is Sinéad O’Connor’s stunning cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.” HELP is a Polaroid — a moment in time — but it still holds up.
One area where the original HELP definitely is better than the original is the artwork which was created by The Stone Roses’ John Squire and Massive Attack’s 3-D.
Here’s a documentary on the making of the original HELP: