5 Record Labels to Bless This Bandcamp Friday
New releases and back catalog essentials from my favorite record labels.
Today is Bandcamp Friday, where every dollar you spend on the site bypasses corporate coffers and pays artists directly.
For the last Bandcamp Friday, I highlighted 48 new albums worth your time. Today we’re going upstream to the source — the record labels curating tomorrow’s classics. Below are my current favorites, complete with their new releases and back catalog essentials.
Keeled Scales
📍Austin, TX: Folk-tinged, emotionally intelligent songwriting is their bread and butter. Keeled Scales appeared on my radar last year with a pair of killer sophomore albums from Good Looks and Lunar Vacation.
New Release: Will Johnson - Diamond City
After a banner 2024, Keeled Scales kick off the new year with a string of bold releases, headlined by Will Johnson’s tenth LP, Diamond City. It fuses alt‑country twang with modern folk warmth into a tapestry that’s both intimate and epic. Every guitar lick and solo resonates with understated power, layering depth and atmosphere that lingers long after the last chord.
Required Listening: Good Looks - Bummer Year
The entire Good Looks discography (19 songs) is required listening. Picture Tom Petty's Americana charm mixed with The War on Drugs guitar riffs, all driven by political, blue-collar lyricism. While their latest album Lived Here For Awhile is currently sold out on vinyl, their debut Bummer Year is getting reissued on white wax later this month.
Ghostly International
📍Ann Arbor, MI: Electronic, ambient, indie pop — Ghostly has been a tastemaker for over two decades. Founder
runs one of my favorite weekly playlist series in .New Release: quickly, quickly - I Heard That Noise
I raved in my last newsletter about Graham Jonson’s new quickly quickly album I Heard That Noise, describing it as “a kaleidoscopic indie-rock gem where melody and noise tussle like old friends, lush instrumentation smashes into homespun charm, and surprises are tucked around every corner like Easter eggs.” Every listen peels back another layer of brilliance, and it’s already perched near the top of my AOTY leaderboard.
Required Listening: Ginger Root - SHINBANGUMI
Southern California’s Cameron Lew, better known as Ginger Root, injects his third album SHINBANGUMI with pure ’70s and ’80s flair, from Japanese City Pop to Philly Soul, delivering earworm hooks like the sing‑along “No Problems” and the instant classic “Only You.” As if that weren’t retro enough, he just dropped an actual VHS tape compiling his Coachella 2025 sets and the SHINBANGUMI short film that aired on Adult Swim. Don’t miss Ginger Root on tour now with Japanese Breakfast.
Julia’s War Recordings
📍Philadephia, PA: Founded by Douglas Dulgarian (They Are Gutting A Body of Water) in 2021, the label just got immortalized in one of 2025’s best songs, “Julia’s War,” by Hotline TNT.
New Release: Wednesday and MJ Lenderman - Guttering
It seems I can’t write a newsletter nowadays without praising MJ Lenderman and Wednesday. Guttering is a joint six song EP that was Julia’s War’s first ever release, on cassette tape in 2021, and now it’s available on vinyl for the first time next month. Label head Dulgarian reflects on Guttering:
“Sometimes, I’ll look back at a chance encounter or passing interaction years later and realize, ‘Wow, that event was the catalyst for all this change.’ I’m proud that this record was the first Julia’s War release […] Records like Guttering and many more have allowed the thing to grow into what it is today: a label of all my favorite bands, and it’s still just all my fucking friends. Each release is this little chapter in the book of it all. And that little guy on the cover is the first page.”
Required Listening: Glixen - She Only Said
Glixen’s She Only Said is a 2023 shoegaze staple — a syrupy, dreamy dose of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine worship, elevated by Aislinn Ritchie’s hypnotic vocals. If you missed the first run, Julia War just announced a second pressing on fruit‑punch wax, limited to 650 units.
DeathWish Inc.
📍Boston, MA: Founded by a member of Converge, and home to some of the heaviest, yet heartfelt releases in the hardcore world. As of 2025, they boast 240 releases from over 120 different artists.
New Release: Glare - Sunset Funeral
Texas shoegaze rockers Glare have spent eight years teasing us with singles and EPs — finally they’ve unleashed Sunset Funeral, an impressive debut LP that crashes in with woozy guitars and epic walls of sound before melting into a closing blissful finale. If you’re eyeing the vinyl, act fast — only 20 copies remain.
Required Listening: Gouge Away - Deep Sage
Florida hardcore band Gouge Away seemed dead in the water after a pandemic hiatus, but a surprise reunion at a Militarie Gun Show gig reignited their fire — fueling the creation of their 2024 comeback album, Deep Sage. Frontwoman Christina Michelle’s razor‑sharp vocals slice through crashing riffs with an urgency that’s impossible to ignore, culminating in the stunning finale “Dallas.”
Topshelf Records
📍Portland, OR: The home of experimental emo, art-pop, and everything in between. Founder Kevin Duquette is hard at work building tone, an open source, artist and listener owned music service. Read more about how music could be from this excellent interview of Duquette by
of .New Release: Thanya Iyer - TIDE/TIED
Montreal’s Thanya Iyer returns this week with her third album TIDE/TIED, a 12‑track meditation in sound and spirit. Across lush synths, strings, and hypnotic loops, Daniel Gélinas’s contemplative drumming and Pompey’s adventurous arrangements weave through Iyer’s gorgeous vocals, blurring ambient, folk, and spiritual jazz into one breathtaking whole.
Required Listening: Parannoul - After the Magic
Topshelf’s Bandcamp is a treasure trove of required listening; so many of their releases have appeared on our Best of 2024 and 2023 lists, including Gulfer (RIP)’s Third Wind and Ratboys’ The Window to name a few.
I settled on Parannoul, who may be my pick for most impressive body of work this decade with To See the Next Part of the Dream (2021), After the Magic (2023) and Sky Hundred (2024). The anonymous South Korean artist has a remarkable way of evoking deep emotions and nostalgia, even without understanding the lyrics. The immense layers of guitars and propulsive rhythms create a transcendent rush that lifts you right out of your seat and into the stratosphere.
Your Turn
What’d you grab for Bandcamp Friday? Drop your haul or your own recs in the comments — I wanna see what you’re spinning!
And if you bought some records, you need a vinyl tote bag. Get $10 off a vinyl tote bag or anything else in the Gift Shop when you become a supporter for just $5. Supporters get access to all past exhibits, which are now behind a paywall.
Happy collecting — see you next week!
I grabbed the new Lael Neale album that came out today - Altogether Stranger
Ah thanks for the reminder!