As a UK-based publication, I tend to show bias in my music taste, so for this week’s Friday Favourites, I wanted to share some of my international favourites.

In this edition, I’ll be excluding K-pop because the genre deserves a Friday favourites of its own.

Kissing Stacey by Dreaming Soda

Following the funding of a second successful Kickstarter campaign, Dreaming Soda released their highly anticipated single Kissing Stacey. The indie-pop track is an instant earworm that explores the interplay of a toy doll’s many angles – perfect plastic capitalist, and curiously self-expressive.

Written back in 2022 and performed at countless shows across Sydney and Melbourne, the new track has become a crowd favourite, and has made it to my list.

On what inspired the track, the band shared.

“In 2022, I stumbled across one of the greatest YouTube videos of all time, overanalysing the Barbie Movies with Queer Marxist Theory by Alexander Avila. Alexander’s video essay is about how this iconic plastic doll could both represent the peak of consumerism and heterosexual values, but still exist as a tool for queer exploration for young people, and has been a video I have frequently re-visited. It inspired me to write a tongue-in-cheek pop track that tries to capture this essence.”

Carnage by Jess Chase

For me, Carnage is a raw look into the feeling of giving your all and investing your heart into a situation, only to be left alone and picking up the pieces yourself.

Written by the Brooklyn-based singer Jess Chase, I found myself resonating with this song a lot and wanted to share this small artist.

Whilst the track came out in 2024, a new remix by Ian Jury is out now. 

No Era Amor by FABRO

This song graced my ears via TikTok, and I’ve had the En Vivo studio session version on repeat for days. It’s got that broody feeling that 90s RnB perfected, and the live accompaniment took this track to a whole new level. It reminded me of peak Bieber, when he dipped his toes into the RnB sound in the 2010s. It’s a performance level and yearning that we are lacking in Western music.

Roommates by Malcolm Todd

Whilst not indie in the record label sense, I think he’s got the modern bedroom-pop indie sound down, and, admittedly, Mr Todd has taken my ears by storm. Something about Roommates has me wanting to get up and shimmy a shoulder whilst simultaneously sitting and staring melancholically out my window, thinking about lovers lost. This is a factor I found in many of his songs, like in Earrings, similarly relatable, I find myself muttering “Extra extra read all about it Malcolm’s in his feelings, and he can’t get out of it”, because I too am often in my feelings.