Eight underrated indie pop albums from last five years that you need to hear

Heavy Light by U.S. Girls (2020)

Music critic Sophie Kemp once referred to Meg Remy as a “collagist.” It’s a very apt label. Kemp, who has been performing under the U.S. Girls name since 2007 released her seventh album – Heavy Light – in 2020 and showed off the restless curiosity that has made her one of pop music's most inventive voices.

From the percussive disco of the opening two tracks – “4 American Dollars” and “Overtime” – to the slow burn power ballad “The Quiver to the Bomb” which comes second to last, Remy tests the varied limits of what pop can be. For her final track, Remy offers a new take on one of her earliest hits. “Red Ford Bronco” had been a subdued, sludgy experiment on her second album, Go Grey, back in 2010. Ten years later, it is recast as a type of industrial dream pop.

That serves as a fitting close to Heavy Light. Remy described it as an album built on voice, and the new “Red Ford Bronco” is just that. Just as importantly, Heavy Light is a clear-eyed look backward, which is also accomplished by the reboot of an old song. The rest of the album features folk-pop (“Woodstock ’99), gentle dream pop (“Denise Don’t Wait”), and the infectious bossa nova shuffle of “And Yet it Moves/ Y Se Mueve.”

There are nods to Diana Ross and other ’60s girl groups but with a decidedly modern vibe. Remy even tosses in a few backward-looking spoken word snippets and refers to herself both as Meg Remy and as Meghan Ann Uremovich – her birth name – in the credits. When Meg Remy looks backward, she is very thorough.

Posture & the Grizzly by Posture & the Grizzly (2021)

Like pretty much every young band that was looking to break in the late 2010s, Posture & the Grizzly was devastated by the pandemic. Tours were canceled, and opportunities were missed. Compounding the challenge, Jordan Chmielowksi was struggling to find compatible bandmates and write a new collection of songs. Posture's second album, I Am Satan, dropped in 2016, and suddenly, they were being labeled the next (in a rather long line) Blink 182. But Chmielowski didn’t really have a full-time band, so he just kept writing and waiting for an opportunity. Teaming up with Ryan Pelegano provided it.

They spent a long time on the next self-titled album, and it was immediately recognized as something of a bridge between their debut – the pure punk Busch Hymns – and the emo-pop punk-leaning Satan. It opens with three pop-punk bangers, including the very Blink-like “Creepshow” and “Black Eyed Susan.” But there are always nods to emo-pop in the lovely love song “Kairi” and the Taking Back Sunday-inspired “Create Me.” Emo-legend Evan Weiss even shows up on “Unfortunate Friends.” 

Posture sets off different chapters with minute-long musical interludes designed to transition into the different sounds offered in the album. It serves a purpose as they bounce between the angry punk screamer “Five Band Gig” (about the futility of having too many bands at a show) to the sweet closer “Flying Sailboats,” a song Chmielowski wrote when he was 16. Apart from a tenth-anniversary rerelease of Busch Hymns, Posture hasn’t been around of late. Chmielowski has been playing bass full-time with Prince Daddy & the Hyena for the past couple of years. But perhaps a reunion will come about in time.