The best new Australian music to listen to this month

Teether & Kuya Neil, Yearn IV

Naarm’s (Melbourne’s) underground music scene can feel like a deranged pot-luck dinner – club rats, art punks and rap surrealists seasoning their demented bone broth with unknown spices pinched from ziplock bags. Teether and Kuya Neil come bubbling out of that soup’s peak-boil with their debut album, Yearn IV.

Neil, one of the country’s most visionary producers, sets the vibe on album opener Scratch the Flea Point with a murky Enter Sandman-esque guitar line and added breakbeats; Teether pokes fun at his hometown on Cosplay (“Half of the club cosplay low class/ How you got all that designer on?“); and on Dial Up (featuring Stoneset) he conjures his trademark feverish imagery (“Who filled the city with rats? Breathing the hottest of breath/ Pig on my bag, down my neck, screaming”).

Teether and Kuya Neil, sonic explorers from Melbourne’s underground.Credit: Phillip Dixon

Yearn IV locates its energy in Naarm’s community, cultures and creativity, pokes fun at its class contradictions and hedonism, and isn’t afraid to embody the present moment’s existential dread in Neil’s swampy but nonetheless electric production. Teether’s tongue is on fire, but ultimately Yearn IV’s a bisque to burn the brain. Nick Buckley

Montaigne, it’s all about the money

If you had to guess which local pop artist would manage to work the lyric “I am renouncing the monetary system” into a gleefully pinballing art-pop track, your mind may have drifted to Montaigne. It’s all about the money is the fourth single from Montaigne’s upcoming fourth album, and it’s a return to their best: piercing and funny, with a delicious sticky melody that will bounce in your head for days. The production, by Montaigne with assistance from talented dance producer Wave Racer, bursts with bright guitars and jaunty electronic effects.

The Sydney artist’s new album, it’s hard to be a fish, will land on June 19, and it marks their first as a fully independent artist after splitting with major label Sony a few years back. They recently joked on April Fool’s Day that they had re-signed, which is perhaps an indication of how little love is lost between the two parties.

Montaigne’s new album, out next month, will be their first as an independent artist after parting ways with Sony Music.Credit: Jess Gleeson

Independence clearly suits Montaigne, who over the last few years has bounced from creative project to creative project, including an acting stint on SBS’s musical comedy Time To Buy and video game soundtrack work for Stray Gods: the Roleplaying Musical, which earned them a Grammy nomination. Jules LeFevre

Holly Hebe, Don’t Come Crying

Melbourne artist Holly Hebe, 23, has described her own sound as “if PinkPantheress and Clairo had a baby”, which is exactly the sort of pop inbreeding I can get behind.

Her debut EP Ruby, released last September, showcased her dreamy indie pop, sensitive songs built on chiming guitars and delicately chugging synths, made for staring through rain-streaked bus windows. Songs like Bottle Blonde and Hat Hair, where she yearned for a boy with “a safety pin holding up his cargo pants”, also highlighted her impeccable songwriting and knack for catchy melodies.

Her new singles have been something else, though: Bitterness, with its skittering trip-hop, adds a confident new texture to Hebe’s lovelorn charm, and Don’t Come Crying counters her gorgeous, Sarah Cracknell-esque vocals with an addictive wash of stuttering electronica. Along with her grainy videos and Instagram visuals that take in the hand-printed naivety of ’90s DIY twee-pop, Hebe’s is a world I increasingly want to live in. Robert Moran

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