Homegrown Handpicked: A Playlist Of Our Favourite Releases From May 2026

Editor's Note: For this edition, we've included a few standout songs that were released in early June. We apologize for the anguish that this may cause to some of you.

I've come across a suspicious amount of incredible indie-rock bands from Australia in the last few weeks. When another friend shared my suscipion, I started wondering even harder — what was so special about the mysterious land down under where Impalas are Tamed? (Kevin Parker is from Perth) Was is the outback life that's surorunded by all kinds of animals that can kill you? or the easygoing barefeet, mullet-in-the-wind, beer-in-the-sun, values of mateship?

Turns out, it’s funding. Australia seems to have a real support system for independent music, with bodies like Creative Australia and Music Australia funding national tours, international showcases, recording, promotion, artist development and regional shows. The Contemporary Music Touring Program gives artists money to tour original Australian music across the country, especially outside the big cities. Music Australia’s Export Development Fund helps bands take their music overseas. Sound NSW backs artists making and promoting new music, with dedicated support for First Nations musicians too — a whole ecosystem helping weird little bands that go on to become breakout sensations like Royel Otis, The Jungle Giants or The Paper Kites.

I was delighted to discover that even smaller bands close to my heart like like Sex Mask, a post punk/alt rock trio have had their international and national showcases supported by organizations like Sounds Australia. The so-called magic of a song that 'just gets you,' which is often attributed to the mystics of muses, can sometimes also look like visibility, opportunity, and a government that completely hate its citizens and sees them as nothing but vermin and pawns to acquire more power.

God bless a culture that values art for art's sake, and could we please get some too, mate?

Here's our playlist of handpicked releases from the month of May:

Mumbai’s Bhayanak Maut are one of the pioneering bands of Indian groove and technical metal, known for their dual-vocal attack, blast beats, crushing riffs, and high-energy breakdowns. Their new single ‘Severance’ takes aim at corporate culture through a brilliantly absurd lyric video designed the most non-boring PowerPoint presentation you'll ever see. In a quarterly performance review, the track turns workplace jargon into horror, with slides celebrating a "Misery Manifestation Methodology", declaring "You aren’t enough", offering "One free grave with your paycheck", and advising employees to "Bend the knee, kiss the ring" and "Walk to your death again". Across fake reports, compliance reviews, and severance packages, Severance satirically imagines the modern workplace as a violent machine built on obedience..

Bengaluru rapper and producer DHP goes full Travis Scott on his new single ‘Ride’, with themes addiction, paranoia, bravado, and trying to stay in control while slipping into self-destruction. The track is DHP at his most unguarded self who has already clocked the cost of his own mythology, rapping through dependency and devotion. Built on psychedelic trap and ambient hip-hop, the song leans on thick basslines, smoke-curled synths, and heavy Auto-Tune to create a dark, hypnotic sound, with a catchy chorus alongside a theatrical noir-coded black-and-white video by Anush Surya Kumar.

Goa-based artist Tsumyoki opens his upcoming EP, 'AFRO YOKI. with ‘You & I’, a warm Afro-leaning single built around easy coastal grooves and a sound he calls ‘Goan bounce’. The track comes from the music he grew up with in Goa, where his family listened to African beats, Portuguese music and Brazilian songs recorded off the radio by his grandfather in Dubai. It sets up AFRO YOKI as a project shaped by Goa’s post-colonial identity and Tsumyoki’s own move across hip-hop, pop, R&B, dancehall and Afro-influenced sounds.

Homegrown artist Arjun C is the lovechild of 80s optimistic nu-disco, synth-pop, alt-R&B with a mix of Bappi Lahiri and Prince with the visuals of 80s Japanese infomercials. In his new single, 'Medicine', the same sparkly synths take on a bubbly garage-rock form, speaking to the brain fog you get even after you've taken all your meds. A stubborn virus? A new crush? The jury's still out. In the self-directed music video, the artist brings on 3 more Arjun Cs, perhaps trying to find out which among them is the real one. The track reminds me of 'Opus no. 1', Cisco's universal default hold music for their corporate phone systems from the 90s. But only if it had a little more soul, some longing, and was perfectly suited for the Carlton dance.

For homegrown artist Kambli, music became a space of comfort that he turned to after leaving home for college. The name itself comes from the Malayalam word for blanket, inspired by childhood memories of running to his mother’s blanket whenever he felt scared of the the dark. In his new single ‘Hold On’, the fourth track from his upcoming album 'Player One', he looks at the the immediate aftermath of a heartbreak with a soft RnB-electronic sound. It melodically sifts through appeals of staying for one more conversation over a cig reminising about where things went wrong.

One of the most influential names in Indian heavy music, Mumbai band Scribe have spent two decades building a cult following around their ‘Scribecore’ sound with a mix of modern metal, hardcore, theatrical storytelling, and pop-culture references. On their new single, they weave a dark story about guilt, mob violence, broken promises, and a country turning into a prison while people turn a blind eye. Through figures like Nandu who is 'Sab Ka Bandhu' (a friend of all), from the 1994 comedy-action film 'Raja Babu', the track brings a desi absurdity to political decay and an angry, almost folkloric response to it.

Indian-American rapper, producer, and director KOAD’s self-produced single ‘bollywood and hip hop’ blends trap production, Bollywood-inspired maximalism, and South Asian folk influences through a sample of the Punjabi folk song ‘Lathe Di Chadar’. The playful folk love song takes on a hard-hitting trap 808 beat with a garba rhythm of hi-hats, while KOAD raps as a diasporic kid who has never visited the ‘homeland’ and grew up on a mix of Bollywood and hip-hop. The video goes fully vibrant with Punjabi, Gujarati, and African-American references, glossy Bollywood-style imagery, bright colours, stylised performances, and KOAD in a very swaggy, sequined pink lehenga.

Champak's debut album 'A1' is their multi-genre opus from the echoes of psychedelia, that combines existential dread that is friendlier and more ironic, the optimism of stomp-clap-hey-ho and indie-folk of the early 2010s, the angst of indie sleaze, some cool electronica and, and trip hop and wraps it all up with very some impressive production. 'Love Is Blind', my personal favourite from the album, is an alt-rock/nu-gaze exploration of the thrill of love that erodes; something that make you want to "hold hands and walk into the ocean together".

21-year old Mumbai-born artist vinayvvs calls himself 'a graduate from the Travis Scott and Kanye West school of maximalism'. In his latest EP 'NOCTURNIA,' he builds a 12-minute soundtrack for a night you won’t remember the next day. Somewhere between high-energy desi hip hop and melodic rap, the EP brings together sample-heavy instrumentals, glassy melodic vocals, punchy drums, and witty lyricism, made for "moshpits, workouts, or one-man concerts in your room at 2am." Conceptually, 'NOCTURNIA' opens up a darker version of the city through glittering skyscrapers, bright lights, clubs, cars, and dark alleyways — where every desire has a doorway.

Kolkata-based producer and transmedia artist khokkosh. writes, produces, mixes, masters, directs, and designs all her own work. On ‘freeuse .org’, she brings together grainy synths, industrial pulses, heavy percussion, and pop melodies for a track that hangs between self-pleasure and self-destruction. Referencing kink culture, the song brings together erotic release, spiritual longing, and death, while the video draws on the Islamic ritual of Ghusl and memories of her grandmother’s funeral bath. Moving through different versions of the narrator’s consciousness, ‘freeuse .org’ turns the digital age’s isolation and alienation into something that is a visceral and physical response.

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