“Has it ever been easier to complain publicly about something without trying to change it?”

That’s one of the credos that Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have adopted for the upcoming release of their second collaborative album, “A ? of When,” which came out July 10 via Domino.

It’s a fist-waving-in-the-air against strictly online culture, where a lot of context gets lost. And a lot of musical memory is so brief that it’s easy to feel defeated as an artist.

So it makes sense that, like a lot of musicians, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom are struggling with how to release an album in the digital age. Fair enough. You spend all this time writing and pouring yourself into something. You release it. The internet gobbles it up in mere minutes. The cycle moves on. Did you even release an album? There’s already something else coming down the pipeline…

That’s where a sense of physicality comes in—a physical release like an actual piece of vinyl you’ve got to buy at the store. And, in the case of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom’s upcoming album, you can’t even stream this thing online if you wanted to. They’ve made the choice to keep it off of streaming services and to make a bit of an in-real-life-only event. 

All the concern about battling internet release schedules and creating a tangible, physical release also means the title track, “A ? of When (Ultimate Drive Time Mix),” sounds like the full-throated rock and pop records of the late 1960s and 1970s. 

There are elements of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, mostly due to Panda Bear’s uncanny vocals that remind me so much of Wilson. Massive guitars call back to Pete Townshend’s best and biggest work with The Who. Plus, the “Ultimate Drive Time Mix” edit actually takes out the sirens and some of the background clutter from the original version that makes it more suitable for actual radio play – talk about nostalgia!

There’s a throwback sound to the whole affair that makes as much a battle against streaming services as it is a throwback time machine to making music sound a lot like it did back in the day when you had to get up and buy the record and sit and listen to the whole damn thing in your bedroom while reading the liner notes.

And I’ll do just that.

This article was originally published on Midbrow. 

We featured lots of new music for you in Big Sonic Heaven tonight including two Shoegaze singles, one from Canada’s Prepare My Glider, featuring Gouachepaint on vocals, and another from Swedish band Kallsup. We’ll also heard the lovely cinematic dreampop of Flower Face out of Montreal, along with another new Echo and the Bunnymen track.

Plus, from Italy, Steffano Guzetti’s 4AD-inspired compilation has just been released and I shared a couple tracks from that, featuring Emma Anderson, Heidi Berry, and Ian Masters. We also gave the Singaporean artist Shye another spin, and of course, many of your favorite shoegaze, dreampop and post-punk tracks, including a Creation Records set.

View the playlist below and listen to the show recording above for up to two weeks after it airs.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for Aug. 23, 2026

• “Hyperballad” – Björk
• “Alfie” – deary
• “Blood Spilled” – Blonde Redhead
• “The Light That Surrounds You” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “Baby Talk” – Lush
• “Bleed” – She’s Green
• “Boyfriend” – Majesty Crush
• “Hurt” – The Haunted Youth
• “Last Dance” – The Secret French Postcards
• “Skin Of The Night” – M83
• “Living In Another World” – Talk Talk
• “I Wanted It To Be You” – Shye
• “Catch The Breeze” – Slowdive
• “On My Own” – Ulrich Schnauss
• “You & them & missing” – BlauDisS &Tilly
• “Falter” – Acopia
• “To Here Knows When” – My Bloody Valentine
• “Does This Hurt?” – The Boo Radleys
• “It’s a Fine Day (feat. Ian Masters)” – Stefano Guzzetti
• “Lilac Wine” – Jeff Buckley
• “Chimär (Gbg)” – Kallsup
• “Magic Only” – Panda Riot
• “Change” – Prepare My Glider
• “Tristan / Sanvean” – Dead Can Dance
• “Bad Dream” – Flower Face
• “White Light” – Locust & Olive Kimoto
• “St. Swithin’s Day” – Dubstar
• “Brussels Is Haunted” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “Deep Ocean Vast Sea” – Peter Murphy
• “Love’s Riddle (feat. Emma Anderson & Heidi Berry)” – Stefano Guzzetti
• “Face” – Moev
• “Take Forever (feat. Robert Smith)” – The Japanese Popstars

Tonight, in Big Sonic Heaven, we brought you some great new shoegazey, atmospheric music. We featured Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, also known as L’Rain, whose genre-bending music has been described as kaleidoscopic. We also featured some beautifully layered atmospheric shoegaze from In Inertia, out of Jakarta, Indonesia. We played the new Shye, who always delivers a great Dreampop track, and the first single from Swervedriver’s Raise:demos album coming out this October, and your favorite Shoegaze, Dreampop, and Post-Punk tracks.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for Aug. 16, 2026

“Black Celebration” – Depeche Mode
“Down with the Upward” – A Shoreline Dream (feat. Mark Gardener)
“Brussels Is Haunted” – Echo & The Bunnymen
“Les Yper-Sound” – Stereolab
“Flawed (demo version”) – Swervedriver
“Musette And Drums” – Cocteau Twins
“There Must Be so Much More” – Pink Turns Blue
“Ophelia 3:58” – Johnny Marr
“Are You Safe?” – Maquillage
“500 (Shake Baby Shake)” – Lush
“Never Follow Suit” – The Radio Dept.
“Lusty” – Lamb
“I Wanna Disappear” – Starflyer 59
“Breaking My Light” – Minor Victories
“Love Spells” – Attic Ocean
“Six Different Ways” – The Cure
“In The Flowers” – Sea Lemon
“What Remains Is Beautiful” – In Inertia (feat. Niskala)
“Bonny” – Prefab Sprout
“I Wanted It To Be You” – Shye
“Bright As Yellow” – The Innocence Mission
“The Sweetness Of Honey” – Club 8
“Euphoria (Firefly)” – Delerium
Want You – deary
“Hoppípolla” – Sigur Rós
“Dark Horse” – Edward Ka-Spel
“So And Slow It Grows (7″ Remix)” – WIR
“Death Cults” – Dead Can Dance
“elmyra” – L’Rain
“Harrowdown Hill” – Thom Yorke
“Come Together (7″ Version)” – Primal Scream
“Ruined In A Day” – New Order
“swim” – Night Tapes
“After the Rain” – The Orange Peels
“Crown of Thorns” – Erasure
“My Times Up” – The Raveonettes

Tonight was a compilation kind of night. I featured tracks from the upcoming “We Are The Beautiful” 4-CD box set that tracks the development of the shoegaze genre over the past 20 years. I also spun a track from L.A. based Tombstones In Their Eyes, which is from the recently released shoegaze/dreampop box set called “Mind Your Mind,” and honored Sinéad O’Connor, with her passing being 3 years ago today.

Plus, we heard brand new music from Johnny Marr, Night Tapes, She’s Green, and much, much more along with your fave shoegaze, dreampop and post-punk classics.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for July 26, 2026

• “Souvlaki Space Station” – Slowdive
• “Convertible” – Prepare My Glider
• “Speakers Don’t Speak” – The Wolfgang Press
• “Be Still (Robin Guthrie remix featuring Elizabeth Frazer)” – Peace Together
• “The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance” – Sinéad O’Connor
• “Ophelia” – Johnny Marr
• “Nothing Natural” – Lush
• “locket” – She’s Green
• “War in Heaven” – The Raveonettes
• “I’ll Fall With Your Knife” – Peter Murphy
• “Fall” – Tombstones In Their Eyes
• “Lazy Day” – The Boo Radleys
• “On Your Side” – The Innocence Mission
• “Brussels Is Haunted” – Echo & The Bunnymen
• “Pagan Poetry” – Björk
• “Crash Landing” – Mary in the junkyard
• “Waiting For The Night” – Depeche Mode
• “Double Sky” – Autoregulate
• “Blissfield” – Au Revoir Borealis
• “Juniper” – Forest Circles
• “Closedown” – The Cure
• “The Worst Taste In Music” – The Radio Dept.
• “The Cicadas” – Dead Can Dance
• “Horror Head” – Curve
• “God’s Dream” – Ringo Deathstarr
• “Coastal” – Attic Ocean
• “Lovesleep” – Swallow
• “to be free (remastered)” – Night Tapes
• “Aikea-Guinea” – Cocteau Twins
• “wake up” – The Haunted Youth
• “Memories Fade” – Tears For Fears
• “Clusters” – Emma Anderson
• “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours” – The Smiths
• “It’s Enough” – Atmos Bloom

I’m a sucker for a sweet sentiment wrapped up in a flannel-toned, 90’s alternative rock song that sounds like it could be the intro music for a family-friendly teen drama from 1995. 

If that sounds hyper-specific, know that it’s a subset of music that’s very popular right now, thanks to Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby, Kurt Vile , Courtney Barnett and others. It’s rooted in bands chasing that sound of Big Star and Lemonheads; of big guitars with a bit of fuzz and layers of jangle on top. It’s full but non-threatening. 

It’s music for soft, emotional lumberjacks. Or if you want to be boring about it, a contemporary take on college radio from 30 years ago.

No one is doing it better in my book than Widowspeak, the husband-and-wife duo of Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas. They’re now based in Brooklyn but originally from Washington. (You can hear that geography in their music.) They released their seventh album “Roses” on Captured Tracks on June 5.

Their excellent new single “If You Change” is everything I just described and more; a lovely little piece of dream pop with just a splash of alt-country. And the sentiment! Listen to these lyrics:

If you change, don’t change too much
‘Cause I really loved this one

It goes deeper than what I first suspected — a sweet little love song about liking someone as they are, even as they grow old together. According to vocalist-songwriter Molly Hamilton, it’s more than that, writing that she “thought about the fear of change, and when things (situations, objects) feel stuck in time because of a fear of ruining them. You always hear “mint condition” as though it is as an asset, but it also means that thing hasn’t been used, lived with, loved. It never gets to fulfill its destiny.”

Even without that lyrical depth, the song is an absolute banger that’s been stuck in my head for days.

Listen to In The Groove with host Ryan Patrick Hooper weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. ET on 101.9 WDET or stream on-demand at wdet.org. 

This article was originally posted on Midbrow.

On this week’s Big Sonic Heaven, we heard Attic Ocean, a German shoegaze band; Philadelphian multi-instrumentalist Angel Ocana’s project, Forest Circles; and the latest from Kiss Facility, an Arabic shoegaze band out of Paris, France. We also celebrated 31 years of Bjork’s album Post and Swervedriver coming to Detroit! Along with your favorite Shoegaze, Dreampop, and Post-punk classics.

Big Sonic Heaven playlist for June 14, 2026

• “The Same Deep Water As You” – The Cure 
•  “Sleepsong” – deary
• “Machine Gun” -Slowdive 
• “Plasma” – Kiss Facility  
• “Back to Fourteen” – The Twilight Sad 
• “Feed The Tree” – Belly 
• “In Real Life” –  ACTORS 
• “Hello” – State Of Grace 
• “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken” – Camera Obscura 
• “One Day” – Future Islands 
• “Thursday” – Asobi Seksu 
• “Texture” – Catherine Wheel 
• “The Headmaster Ritual” – The Smiths 
• “8th Deadly Sin” – Miki Berenyi Trio 
• “Smoke and Mirrors” – Doublespeak 
•  “Neon Beanbag” – Stereolab
• “Gorecki” – Lamb 
• “In Violet” – Searows 
• “Hyperballad” – Björk
• “Your Love Is A Lie” – Roller Derby
• “Juniper” – Forest Circles  
• “Rave Down” – Swervedriver 
• “Adrift” – Cranes 
• “Myth” – Beach House
• “In The Flowers” – Sea Lemon 
• “Carolyn’s Fingers” – Cocteau Twins 
• “Out Of Sight” – Hooverphonic 
• “Serafina” – Kilbey Kennedy 
• “Fallin’ In Love” – Lush 
• “Coastal” – Attic Ocean
• “The Beach” – Winter 
• “Leave In Silence” – Depeche Mode 
• “Mon Amour Sauvage” – Dead Can Dance
• “Shock Me” – Red House Painters 
• “Until You Come Back Home” – Nother & Moon Leap
• “All Nerve” – The Breeders  
• “The Dog-end of a Day Gone By” – Love and Rockets 
• “No Motion” – Dif Juz

Four years in, the war in Sudan has produced the largest displacement crisis in the world. Nearly 14 million people have been forced from their homes. Both the United States government and a United Nations fact-finding mission have called the violence a genocide, citing a coordinated campaign by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces against the Zaghawa and Fur communities of Darfur.

In the United States, the response has been quiet.

Khadega Mohammed has spent much of her life trying to say something about that silence — through poetry, community organizing, and her work at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, where she is the only Sudanese person and the only Black person on staff.

Born in Sudan, raised in Saudi Arabia, and resettled in the United States with her family in 2007, Mohammed is a spoken word artist whose signature poem, “Between,” opens the PBS AfroPoP documentary “Revolution from Afar.”

She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about the Sudan she remembers, the America she lives in, and the in-between where her poetry was born.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

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