Photo by Jaxon Whittington

Artist: julie, the trio of vocalist and bassist Alex Brady, vocalist and guitarist Keyan Pourzand, and drummer Dillon Lee

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Buzz: It’s been a minute since we’ve seen a good attempt at an enigmatic origin story in the new artist ranks. julie’s begins like many of the younger artists we are currently hearing rise through the glare of shoegaze’s next wave: A group of friends in high school start a band and self-release their music through TikTok and well-curated Instagram posts. It gains traction while making their elusiveness a big part of their allure. The aesthetic is on point, and the shares and follows start to mount. Except the more of julie’s music you hear, the more you discover that there’s something more to them than just a mood board of delay pedals, murmuring vocals drenched in reverb, and blurry photo posts.

Of all of the newer shoegaze bands making music right now, the Orange Country-bred trio arguably sound the least reductive as far as what their peers are creating on their debut album (a major label debut, at that, being signed to Atlantic Records,) my anti-aircraft friend. For one, it doesn’t hide Brady and Pourzand’s presence in its murk, with their voices cutting clean through its erupting grunge craters. Guitars occasionally swerve in a fluctuating gravity, but julie are also incisive in tuning their rumble toward bleeding their youth sonically into compact bouts of ’90s noise rock and lethargic pools many of their peers wouldn’t have the patience to wade through. If Horsegirl have got refreshing the classic moves of indie rock in earnest cornered, then julie are restoring shoegaze to its more corrosive form rather than hiding their flaws behind a wall of filtered, dreamy textures.

Sound: A young artist collective who has studied all of the albums from the ’90s alternative era’s loudest and strangest corners with purity rather than posture, and want to do that art justice from a modern perspective.

Recommended: “tenebrist”, “clairbourne practice”, and “feminine adornments” from their newly released debut album, my anti-aircraft friend

julie’s my anti-aircraft friend is available now on Atlantic Records.