Discoverer 133: new indie findings

Let's travel again to our Antipodes to meet three more talented women and their very diverse music projects at our discoverer series. You can't go wrong going back down under!

Totally Mild. We begin our music trio in Melbourne, Australia. with this quartet leaded by Elizabeth Mitchell. As a matter of fact, Totally Mild originally was her solo and much folkier project, that got an official release with 2013's 'Castanet' cassettte. But then came the change, with the addition of Mitchell's friends, regular contributors and live shows support Zachary Schneider (Full Ugly, The Great Outdoors), Lehmann Smith (Kes Band) plus Ashley Bundang (Zone Out) to the mix, also expanding their sounds to embrace a wider palette delving into indiepop realms. The new incarnation of the band came out with debut album 'Down Time' on May 2015 via Bedroom Suck Records, much to overwhelming praise, being nominated for the Australian Music Prize, among others, and touring extensively throughout Europe, supportin the likes of Real Estate, Best Coast or The Chills. The buzz is very easy to understand. Mitchell's voice is simply irresistible, impossibly sweet, fragile and melancholic. There are celestial harmonies. The guitars chime, jangle, arrest you. The songs make waves and stay with you for a long time. What a cracking band!

Nadia Reid. Jump to Port Chalmers, New Zealand, to meet the many wonderful talents of this young artist (just in her middle twenties) that statess began her music career around 2012, although if you check her bandcamp you'll find out an EP titled 'Letters I Wrote and Never Sent', released in October 2011. Whatever the case, in November 2015 we, poor Europeans, finally got able to enjoy her debut album 'Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs', out on Spunk! Records, which saw the light of day a year before in her part of the world. A standout album, Reid not only possesses a voice that immediately demands your attention, full, assured, warm, but her surprisingly honest and mature take on Americana and folk is richer, enduring and affecting in a way that looks eye-to-eye with extraordinary and well-established artists like Gillian Welch, Laura Marling or my beloved Sharon Van Etten. Immense debut.

Fazerdaze. And we end in Auckland, NZ. to meet the even younger Amelia Murray and her haunting dreampop music. Born in Wellington, Amelia relocated to Auckland in 2012 to study music and began her homemade bedroom project, that acquired the form of a debut, self-titled and self-released EP in October 2014. Love from local radios and Internet arrived, with live shows following, on which Murray assembles a full band, with supporting slots for Luna and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. This past December she offered a digital glimpse of the forthcoming first album with the lovely song 'Little Uneasy'. The latest gem to add to a small collection of tunes enveloped in haze, but always letting the sun reach you through the reverb and occasional fuzz. Warm, intimate, comforting yet mysterious. Expectations couldn't be higher.