Chasing Fridays: Sword II, Betty Hammerschlag, Cootie Catcher Q&A, more

After a couple weeks of traveling that led to slightly form-breaking editions of Chasing Fridays, things returned to business as usual this week at Chasing Sundays HQ. Before I get into that, I want to share that I contributed blurbs to Stereogum's 50 Best Albums and 50 Best Songs of the year lists, and I encourage you to peruse those articles and hopefully find some good stuff you missed out on throughout 2025. As for pieces on this site, I published a longform interview yesterday with Glitterer frontman Ned Russin that covered a wide range of topics: his current band, his old band (Title Fight), the economics of punk post-COVID, individualism, careerism, money, and much more. As always, the full version of the interview is only available for paid Chasing Sundays subscribers, so act accordingly.

Ned Russin talks Glitterer, Title Fight, individualism, ripoff hardcore fests, more

“I think if I thought about myself the way that people talk to me sometimes, I’d be insufferable.”

Chasing SundaysEli Enis

Then, there's this edition of Chasing Fridays, which to me feels like a classic. I weigh in on some indie-rock I've been struggling to turn off, dive into one of my favorite recent discoveries, and examine a couple up-and-coming screamo bands who we're going to be hearing much more from in 2026. And last but not least, I did a Q&A with the awesome Toronto twee band Cootie Catcher, who released a great album this year and just announced their signing for Carpark Records for another new LP that's out in early 2026. Lots to listen to, lots to read. Onward.

Sword II - Electric Hour

It took me a little while to determine how good I think this record is. I thought the first single, "Even If It's Just a Dream," was stupendous, one of the few proper Indie-Rock songs of 2025 that genuinely thrills me and easily ranks among the year's best tracks. There aren't any other cuts on Electric Hour that wholly replicate its climactic dream-pop build, and after many considered re-listens, I've determined that that's a good thing. Sword II have pointedly moved away from the arty shoegaze of 2023's Spirit World Tour, and I like where they've settled on the bulk of this album: somewhere between the fuzzy garage-rock of Deerhunter, the smoldering psych of Yves Tumor's most rockin' material, and Sword II's own strain of anglophilic indie-pop with a glint of American snottiness.

So much contemporary indie-rock is slickened with reverb, and it's actually really refreshing to hear a mix that's this dry and upfront. Melodic and rhythmic sturdiness are prioritized over hazy atmosphere, which gives these songs their own special kind of otherworldiness. Taut drum beats, riffs that sizzle yet never melt, and vocal interplay between a bristly, stylistically pitchy male voice and a mystically ethereal female croon that never grows stale. There isn't really one song that's representative of the whole album, but the triple-threat of "Passionate Nun," "Who's Giving You Love," and "Under the Scar" amounts to the perfect Sword II sampler pack.

​I hemmed and hawed about how I wanted to approach reviewing this record. I could tally up the reference points and award Sword II with a cum laude cool-kid score, or make some grandiose proclamation about how Electric Hour illustrates the soaring potential of the post-shoegaze revival. But I think it's more useful to emphasize my personal interest in this record.​ I'm less invested in straight-up Indie Rock than I've been in a decade, and Electric Hour is working overtime to recharge my battery. ​I can't turn this sucker off, and that might be the highest compliment I can pay to a band whose first album I didn't care for at all.

Betty Hammerschlag - Forever Young

I was put onto this record via The Chalice, an already essential new music site helmed by two staples of the millennial blogosphere, Colin Joyce and Leah Mandel. Joyce quoted a friend describing Betty Hammerschlag's Forever Young as "zoomer Grouper," and while I can't think of a more succinct description than that (well, I can, but Joyce doesn't think "cloud-rock" is real, even though Forever Young provides ample evidence to the contrary, so I'll humor his skepticism for the purposes of this blurb), this album is a lot more nuanced than I even expected.

All the cloud-rock tenets – plinky strums, fractured murmurs, damp ethereality – are embedded into the spectral folk arrangements of "Sweet Pills" and "Just***," but Hammerschlag really distinguishes herself from ML Buch and Chanel Beads on cuts like "Charlotte & Pia" and "Real." On the former, her voice is pitched up and blurred into an aqueous ripple that gurgles behind the acoustic strums like a pot of boiling water glugging in the background of a bustling kitchen. The composition loops placidly for nearly six minutes, and each go-around pulls you deeper into Hammerschlag's steamy, psychedelic trance.

On "Real," Hammerschlag assembles a stack of competing vocal tracks where she alternately raps, croons, and moans in little fragments, torquing each part with different pitches of baby-voiced auto-tune. On this song, all traces of Grouper melt away and Hammerschlag instead resembles hypnagogic Soundcloud wizards like Izaya Tiji and Doris fiddling with a misty sample of acoustic guitar. The second half of Forever Young drifts back toward the kind of Nordic folk that Escho loyalists are accustomed to, and I enjoy it all. But the clutch of songs in the middle of this record include some of the coolest stuff I've heard in this developing idiom of cloudy – erm, zoomer Groupery – pseudo-rock.

Some Images of Paradise - i expect the same of you

This record is kind of a mess, but in a way that fans of Weatherday, Glass Beach, and 300SkullsAndCounting will probably adore. Lo-fi emo that's constantly shape-shifting into stretches of blackened screamo, hyper synth-punk, and upwardly crashing post-rock. The Limerick, Ireland band have a million different genre tags in their Bandcamp and I'm seeing people call this hyperpop-influenced slowcore and even compare certain tracks to Yung Lean, which I don't really hear. To me, this sounds like bedroom screamo made by kids who love Your Arms Are My Cocoon and Black Country, New Road, and are using every tool at their disposal to convey the same degree of life-affirming ambition. The songs are undeniable when they work, and underwhelming when the band think they're being more cleverly eccentric than they actually are.

The ephemeral moments that pull from modern internet music – a mediocre melodeath lead twirling over a jungle break, or slowcore mumbles laid atop a generically chugging drum machine – feel more performatively quirky than they do necessary to the album's musical narrative. I think Some Images of Paradise are more effective in wounded slowcore mode ("wool gathering") or when they're unleashing a torrent of screamo rage at the top of a post-rock mountain peak ("u make me miserable"). For a lot of listeners, the abruptness of their songwriting will be the draw, and if you let yourself submit to the wide-armed scope of it all without getting hung up on the clunky details, then i expect the same of you certainly has breath-stealing appeal. I'm able to succumb to the splendor about half the time. Seeing them pull these songs off live would probably get me over the hump, though.

soap box derby - "a window between us" / "bitter apparition"

When it comes to screamo bands pooling together other styles with youthful abandon, soap box derby are more my speed. The Florida quartet's 2024 single, "Anniversary," is a grunge-gaze lurcher that bashes intuitively until singer Lily Wednesday Minks' cool composure reaches its limits, and the shrill screamo yelps take over. Their second track, "twelve hours," was more shoegazing skramz, but soap box derby's newest two-songer is a huge development: heavier, knottier, way more confident. Minks has ditched the coy shoegaze mumbles for a full-throated wail that could easily be wasted on bland metalcore clean choruses, but is tastefully employed by soap box derby in the sprint/saunter screamo blitz "a window between us."

"bitter apparition" actually does teeter toward metalcore (soap box derby have played with Holder, after all, and most Zoomer screamo bands throw in a breakdown or two), but it never actually abandons its moody screamo baseline. In this song, Minks' voice – the clear selling point of this band – cracks and curls in on itself like Wednesday's Karly Hartzman, giving the manically crushing track a peculiarly catchy affect. If this band aren't already fielding offers from legitimate labels trying to get it on the screamo boom, then there're no good A&R's left in the game.

Bugcatcher - Big Field

This Bugcatcher record is really fucking good. I've previously compared the Rochester, NY band to Spencer Radcliffe and villagerrr, and I'll also throw groups like Fust and Friendship in the FFO pile. But even if you don't like any of those bands, I think there's probably something in Big Field for you. The lilting indie-folk of the title-track is nice, but I'm partial to the slippery four-chord groove of "How Long" – another one of the year's best indie-rock tunes – and the seven-minute slowcore epic, "Wondering About," which plucks the mournful twang of Bedhead and drops it down into Bugcatcher's own Northeastern form of stare-into-the-bonfire music. I couldn't find a way into this year's Shallowater album, but I've been frolicking in Bugcatcher's Big Field for the last month.

Chasing Down

SOPHIA, NOLAN, ANITA, and JOSEPH
of
Cootie Catcher

Chasing Down is a Q&A with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

I used to do a column on this site called Media Mail where I reviewed any physical media anyone sent me. It was a fun idea that sadly crowded my doorstep with more junk than gems, but one cassette I adored receiving was a tape-only release by a young Toronto band called Cootie Catcher. Their music sounded like turn-of-the-century twee made by kids who grew up listening to Frankie Cosmos and Sophie, and they're finally beginning to get the recognition they deserve. Their 2025 LP, Shy at first, is one of the year's most playfully astute indie-pop records, and Cootie Catcher already have another album on deck for 2026: their Carpark Records debut Something We All Got. The first single "Gingham Dress" didn't do much for me, but "Straight Drop" is a winner – perky, sticky, a little emo, a lotta quirked-up twee.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Cootie Catcher about laptop twee, luddite twee, Toronto's DIY scene, their new album, and more. Read the full interview below.

What do you think of the genre "laptop twee" that a few heads (myself included) have filed Cootie Catcher into? Do you feel part of a movement of similar-sounding bands or off on your own, stylistically speaking? 

We def are in the laptop twee category however we all agree that we’re different in that the laptop is an instrument in the band as opposed to it being the whole focus. Haven’t really come across another band with our particular approach? Have seen lots of electronic/acoustic merge, but not in the same light-hearted vein. It feels fresh and innovative which is great; not a huge fan of “throwback” stuff. 

Speaking of twee, the 2000s were a great decade for that genre. What's your favorite twee (feel free to use that tag loosely) record of the 2000s and why? 

The twee aspect is mostly Nolan and Anita’s influence. Joseph says The Noise Made by People by Broadcast for 2000s because of the 60’s psyche influence which he loves - sounds equally from the future and the past (and that Pastels would take the cake if we were including the 90s). Nolan says I Know You Know by Guther because of the minimal production and digital/acoustic combination is exactly what we try to do.

I also think someone Anne Laplantine nails what the twee sound instrumentally on the album Nordheim; really twinkly and sparse. Anita says We’ll Have a Time by Dear Nora since she likes really direct songwriting with a clear perspective. The appeal of twee for Anita is the feeling of hearing unfiltered stories and feelings through music.