Every Friday, Sound Under curates the best of Australian alternative music: fresh releases, overlooked gems, rising artists, and songs worth spending real time with.
Whether you’re driving down the coast, walking through the city late at night, or simply tired of playlists chosen by algorithms, these picks are built differently. This isn’t about hype cycles or whatever is trending for 48 hours. It’s about music with replay value, personality, and something real inside it.
No artist is too early. No sound is too left-field, and no scene is too small.
Here’s this week’s Picks:
765 — Kayps
Earlier this week, we wrote about Bunuba Baby, Kayps’ new album and a project that feels much bigger than one artist telling his story.
At the centre of it is Kayps — his perspective, his experiences and his relationship with the community around him — but throughout the album, those individual stories constantly open into something wider. Family, history, Country, community and the things carried from one generation into the next all become part of the record.
“765” is one of the tracks that captures that world particularly well.
There is confidence here, but what makes Kayps interesting is that the confidence rarely feels separated from where he comes from. His identity isn’t something sitting around the edges of the music; it is built directly into it.
And that’s ultimately what makes Bunuba Baby worth spending time with. It isn’t just an album built around Kayps. It feels like something created by and for a community, with everyone involved bringing something to the table.
We went much deeper into the album in our full review earlier this week, so if “765” catches you, go spend some time with *Bunuba Baby*.
Foreverland — Vlads
Vlads were one of the first bands we wrote about on Sound Under, and they keep proving why we liked them in the first place.
“Foreverland” shows another side of the band.
There is something almost utopian about the idea behind it: a place for people who don’t necessarily fit neatly into the mould society has created for them, but find their own playground anyway.
“Welcome one and welcome all / This land’s ours forevermore.”
That feels like the heart of the song.
Foreverland isn’t necessarily somewhere you can point to on a map. It’s the place you create with the people around you. Somewhere you can live freely, hold onto your memories and, at least for a little while, escape everything outside of it.
Vlads wrap that idea inside a massive chorus built to be sung together, which feels pretty appropriate for a song fundamentally about belonging.
Don’t Mean It — The Colliflowers
At this point, there are a few things we’ve come to expect from The Colliflowers: great rhythm, strong melodies, incredibly tight grooves and songs that know exactly how to get stuck in your head.
“Don’t Mean It” ticks pretty much every one of those boxes.
The riff grabs you immediately, the rhythm keeps everything moving and the whole track has that effortless bounce The Colliflowers are becoming very good at creating.
But underneath all of that catchiness is someone looking straight through another person’s bullshit.
“Cut to the core, you can see it / Choose to ignore and believe it / I can see right through / You don’t mean it.”
It’s simple, direct and exactly the kind of line that sticks.
The verses make the situation even messier — vodka tonic in a teacup, a trashed house, broken glass on the floor, forgotten keys — while the narrator seems increasingly aware that whatever this person says doesn’t really mean much anymore.
And somehow The Colliflowers turn all of that into something ridiculously fun to listen to.
Considering the run they’re on right now, you start wondering when they’re actually going to miss.
So far, it doesn’t look like anytime soon.
Parachute — Joe Mungovan
“Parachute”, the seventh track from Joe Mungovan’s project Preparing for Lift Off, sounds ridiculously upbeat for a song about feeling like everything around you is falling apart.
And that’s exactly why it works.
Joe plays with that bait-and-switch throughout much of the project. The music pulls you in one direction while the writing quietly takes you somewhere completely different.
Here, you’ve got an energetic, catchy track wrapped around the feeling of going through the same day over and over again, being told how you’re supposed to live, looking for something and continually coming up empty.
Then comes the central image:
“Feels like I’m going down without a parachute.”
It’s funny because the entire song feels like it’s moving upwards while the person inside it is doing the exact opposite.
That contradiction fits ‘Preparing for Lift Off’ perfectly. The project spends a lot of time wrestling with where you belong, what you’re supposed to be doing and how you’re meant to find yourself when everyone else seems determined to tell you the answer.
Even the plane imagery becomes progressively more chaotic until the plane is literally on fire and Joe has no option left but to jump.
If you haven’t heard Preparing for Lift Off yet, start here. Then go explore the whole project.
Scout’s Honour — Zafty
I’ve been a huge fan of Zafty since hearing his EP ‘OMO BURUKU’, which I still think is his best work to date, so seeing another EP on the way immediately had my attention.
I still need some proper time with the new project before deciding exactly where it sits within his catalogue, but “Scout’s Honour” is a banger.
The hook is immediate, the concept is clever and Zafty once again shows how naturally he can make songs that feel big without completely sanding away his personality.
The whole thing is built around the childhood promise of Scout’s honour — three fingers in the air, promising someone you’ll be there — except Zafty turns that into a love song.
And he commits to the idea.
‘OMO BURUKU’ showed how distinctive he could be, but songs like “Scout’s Honour” make you wonder just how far he can push into bigger, more accessible territory without losing what made his music interesting in the first place.
This new EP looks like another step in that direction.
Where Zafty goes from here is going to be very interesting to watch.
Every Friday, Sound Under spotlights the best alternative music beneath the surface.
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