Drag Talk, The Still Out, LaMacchia, Heavy Halo

Nothing else sounds like **Drag Talk**. On debut album Drink The Ocean (MNRK Heavy), the L.A. band finds gauzy beauty in the fathomless chaos that surrounds us, their exquisite shoegaze guitars and Britpop melodicism skewed with Jutty Taylor’s genre-fluid vocals. Harnessing ‘90s indie nostalgia to here-and-now emotional responses, Drag Talk’s lush atmospherics, spacious beats, and hugely emotive hooks create something singular yet accessible and authentic. “I feel like we’re hardcore punk dudes who love Oasis,” offered guitarist Ross O’Carroll, whose pandemic home demos were the germ of the band in 2021. Drag Talk is a coming-together of like-minded friends with long, intertwined histories. O’Carroll, Taylor, and drummer Hayden Scott were former bandmates, while the latter pair also played together in Grammy-winning Swedish rock band Ghost. O’Carroll and fellow guitarist Matt Ripp Bennett were schoolmates in Hawaii but had somehow never been in the same band, and third guitarist (yes, there are three) Neil Popkin played alongside Ripp Bennett in War Tapes. Even the band’s producer, Tom Syrowski (The Killers, Mastodon), has been in their circle since the aughts.