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

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.