The first week of October was jam-packed with excellent releases by established or internet-hyped acts: Zola Jesus, Caribou, Flying Lotus, Iceage, Peaking Lights, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Johnny Marr, The Vaselines, SBTRKT…the list goes on. This makes it an ever-appropriate time to take a glance at smaller releases equally or more worth your time than these acts, hence the fourth edition of Way Too Indie’s monthly music column The Underdog. If you’re looking for a break from the same names that you’ve heard time and time again, here’s where to turn.

Ausmuteants – Order of Operation

This one just storms right out of the gates. Appropriate for the month of its release, spooky synths introduce Order of Operation on first track “Freedom of Information.” This song’s kraut-indebted approach to punk is immediately enticing, and repeats throughout, with killer jams such as “1982” and “Stadiums” proving especially memorable. At times, the kraut-punk tendencies approach pastiche rather than originality, but this actually makes the album pretty hilarious and riotous. What band could write a song like “Felix” and not be a bunch of jokers? That’s not to say Ausmuteants take making music likely, though; Order of Operation is pretty heavy, both in its sound and its impact.

Dinosaur Feathers – Control

Certainly weirder than 2012’s Whistle Tips, Dinosaur Feathers’ latest album portrays them restraining their abundantly gleeful pop tropes in favor of a more disco-indebted breed of synthetic music. Whereas past songs like “Untrue” got by on Bitte Orca-like, off-kilter guitar grooves, on Control, the rhythms are a lot simpler, allowing the vocals and digital elements to do the experimentation. Main songwriter Greg Sullo sounds more like Dave Longstreth than ever before, and the reverbed-out drum machines and wispy white synthetics of songs like “For Jonathan” also land in this avant-folk terrain. Elsewhere, “On My Mind” feels like a classic blues rock tune infused with an odd psychedelic airspace; “Zeitgeist” too blends brass and left-of-center sonic architecture into an entertaining tune. If anything, it sounds here like Dinosaur Feathers are intentionally exerting less Control over their sound.

Little Big League – Tropical Jinx

The sophomore effort from this Philadelphia four-piece has clear musical precedents in twinkly emo and 1990s bedroom sparsity, but sounds fresh while some other acts make fairly ordinary tunes in this style. Among this post-hardcore melancholy, there are songs like the punching, immediate “Sucker”, the eerily dapper “Old Time Fun”, and the doe-eyed “Deer Head”, each equally riveting. Vocalist Michelle Zauner knows how and when to sing, shout, scream, and whisper, making her defeated, discouraged lyricism all the more potent. The band’s guitars sound detached and dissonant, but carry a sense of melody and intrigue not as common in other bands of this style. This all makes for a great time, or as Zauner would put it on “Sucker”, “This, this calls for some drugs!”

Nicholas Krgovich – On Sunset

How are more people not covering this album? Seriously, the Pitchfork crowd might get a real kick out of this one. Krgovich’s got a voice like Dave Longstreth of the impossible-to-pinpoint Dirty Projectors, whose Amber Coffman is a close friend and collaborator; his arrangements testify to the innate appeal of the formerly maligned smooth jazz subgenre in the same way the rise of bands like Rhye and albums like Destroyer’s impeccable, modern classic Kaputt have. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s understandable, but it is true. This is a marvelous, gorgeous, playful album of vast appeal; “City of Night”, for example, is equally likely to entrap fans of lounge music, dream pop, Italo disco, and low-key psychedelic music. “Who’s gonna be there for me?” wonder warm, almost impossibly gripping female vocals in this song’s chorus; with music this good, it’s shocking that the answer to this question isn’t “everyone.”

Olivia Jean – Bathtub Love Killings

Olivia Jean is the vocalist and main songwriter of Third Man Records group The Black Belles. Bathtub Love Killings is kind of like Jean’s Blunderbuss, then; although The Black Belles aren’t broken up, it’s an incredibly bluesy, fiery solo debut similar to Jack White’s lone-star beginning. “Reminisce” has the same deep swagger as many of White’s greatest moments, and “Haunt Me” has the soft glimmer of Blunderbuss‘ many gentler moments. That’s not to say that Jean exists solely in White’s shadow; rather, her music feels characteristically hers even though she has a clear guiding hand. The surprisingly breezy “Merry Widow” is most certainly a Jean-exclusive approach to blues rock, and the haunted-house piano-guitar interplay of “After the Storm” is just held back enough that it retains an idiosyncratic Olivia Jean touch. Sure, Jack White may have produced the album, but he’s done it masterfully; Jean still shines brightly through her blatant influences.

Radiator Hospital – Torch Song

I’ll concede that this album was actually released on the very first day of September, but I missed it last time and it truly deserves a mention. Radiator Hospital is a Philadelphia-based power pop band that make an art of balancing catchiness, poignancy, and vigor. Although they’re only now beginning to receive the attention they deserve, one quick gloss over their Bandcamp shows that they’ve made lots of music in a very short time. Torch Song exhibits this tendency of proliferation in tip-top form: boasting 15 songs in just under 33 minutes with barely any filler, it’s the best version of their jam-packed album style yet. Its best track, “Cut Your Bangs”, is actually a far more melodic and affecting garage pop redo of a lo-fi acoustic stomp released around the same time last year. This improvement in recording quality is only one of the many huge steps forward this incessantly replayable, deeply lovable album makes. With songs as sharp as “Venus of the Avenue” and “Honeymoon Phase” in stow, the guest appearances by Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on “Blue Gown” and “Five and Dime”, as well as the spot her twin sister Allison Crutchfield of Swearin’ gets on “Midnight Nothing”, feel like a second layer of icing on an already delectable, immaculately formed cake.

Son of Stan – Georgia EP

Retrospection is a fad. But hey, with songs as strong as the ones on Son of Stan’s Georgia EP, why not let the past stick around for longer? Through the ridiculously heavy phaser and nocturnal steam of “Feel Her Design”, it’s tough to take issue with this pilfering of old styles. Likewise, the glowing synth hue and watery guitar grind of “Harbor Boat” are too instantly gratifying to demean this EP as unoriginal borrowing. Best of all are the vocals, though; often drenched in reverb and other ’80s effects, their eyes-shifting-across-the-crowd delivery is innately appealing. Imagine how great this would sound over the course of a full-length?

Useless Eaters – Bleeding Moon

Bleeding Moon continues in Useless Eaters’ tradition of writing punk that’s more clearly indebted to rock n’ roll than most of the band’s contemporaries. “Proper Conduct” becomes a halting, messy stomper that looks back on The Ramones’ legacy; “Dungeon” pushes fuzzy power chords to their limit, which helps it sound like the band is in the same room as you; “Aftershock” is a strangely industrial-bound tune that recalls experimental heroes Suicide. In general, Bleeding Moon is a bit more experimental than prior Useless Eaters albums, but it’s just as satisfying.

Wampire – Bazaar

Bazaar is somewhat of a comedown for the Portland, Oregon duo Wampire. Following the scuzzed-out psych-punk of last year’s Curiosity, this sophomore album takes a far more relaxed route to trippy bliss. Single “Wizard Staff” wraps an ’80s gloss and sparkle in layers of twangy, bright guitar, silky brass, and ghostly pianos; even the thornier “Bad Attitude” revels in nostalgia for a more instrumentally diverse, glam-infiltrated era of pop songwriting. This new take on their old sound doesn’t bring Wampire down; instead, their new appreciation for the glitzy, frail jangle of past decades renders Bazaar a fascinating and riveting listen.

Eternally suffering the brunt of the music industry’s pitfalls, the DIY scene still manages to release incredible music in spite of all the obstacles facing it. In particular, New England and the Tri-State Area are putting out some incredible sounds, and many of the most notable acts from these scenes quickly get signed to rising, wholly independent record labels. Specifically, Run for Cover Records, Exploding in Sound Records, and Double Double Whammy, all labels so small that they still have Bandcamp pages, are responsible for providing listeners the recent best of what lies at the fringes of the industry. Based in Boston, Brooklyn, and Ridgewood, NJ respectively (well, EiS also has space in Boston), these labels have given excellent acts like Radiator Hospital, Krill, Two Inch Astronaut, Ovlov, Crying, Pity Sex, Makthaverskan, Mitski, and LVL UP an outlet to captivate bigger audiences. In fact, Speedy Ortiz, now universally revered in indie circles, got their start on EiS before jumping to the somewhat bigger indie label Carpark Records.

It’s worth exploring these labels in depth, but for now, this very superficial overview makes a nice backdrop against which Little Big League’s sophomore effort, Tropical Jinx, can be viewed. This Philadelphia-based four-piece, now signed to Run for Cover after releasing their debut on Tiny Engines, write somewhat lo-fi, faintly dissonant, anxiously glum tunes in line with a lot of the music these labels put out. Their nervously dismal style is grounded by the respectably flexible musicianship of vocalist/guitarist Michelle Zauner, and her words and vocals guide Tropical Jinx across ten antsy, impactful tracks in only thirty-four minutes. The album is merely the latest example of a long lineage of DIY music that manages to be tense and emotive without sounding whiny and irrational, a great new addition to the already wonderful set of recent albums looking back on emo music and 1990s sparseness and loneliness.

Within the album’s opening moments, Tropical Jinx declares its debt to the twinkle of emo and the solitude its lyrics explore. The rough but restrained distortion on the opening notes of the first song (appropriately, the title track) segues into an array of deeply hurt, staring-at-the-ground rock instrumentation. Words arrive soon thereafter, and Zauner’s chilling confession of “I used to have it memorized — the sound of you entering a room” indicates the abandoned direction this album’s lyrics will take. Later tracks such as the woozy, hushed “Take It To a Weird Sad Place” and the roaring, monstrous “Sucker” expand on these themes; in particular, the latter track is one of Jinx‘s best, and it’s exemplary of many of the album’s strengths. Even through the song’s cutting post-hardcore guitar work and fuzzy sonic barriers, Zauner’s lyrics stab like the sharpest of incisors; “Always tend to thrive alone” in the first verse is bested by the chorus’ “I don’t want to leave the house/I’m a sucker/worship the hand over my mouth.” This last line is modified to “worship the hand inside my mouth” for the second chorus, the effect of which is exactly as disquieting as Little Big League planned it to be.

Another strength that “Sucker” displays helps point to an area in which Little Big League could stand to improve. After the last chorus, a chant of “This calls for some drugs” is followed by a brief but intense moment in which Zauner ends the previously stated motif of “I don’t want to leave the house” by gutturally screaming “The house!” The extra force stored in these two words is only repeated on Tropical Jinx during the album’s best song, “Dixie Gun.” Probably the best song about catcalling since Sylvan Esso’s “Hey Mami” blew up earlier this year, its second chorus, like that of “Sucker”, leads to a breakdown followed by a rushing, acutely gratifying sing-turned-shout of “On every fucking street in town/you’ll be the one/they’ll say/’WELL HE WAS ASKING FOR IT!'” It would be great to see Little Big League include more screaming in future releases; of course, Zauner’s low-key, bleeding-heart singing sounds great, but her robust shouting is like an adrenaline shot directly to the heart.

Nevertheless, the seclusion and stress of Tropical Jinx prove to be quite worthwhile throughout. The hazy but scorching instrumentation further adds to this fulfilling setup; lyrics such as “I can’t get you off my mind/I can’t get you off in general” from the don’t-leave-me tale “Boyish” ensure that these oft-explored feelings don’t go stale, and the discomfiting imagery of the slacker-esque “Property Line” achieves the same effect. It’s all very impressive work, one that merits the question, why don’t bands like this have a bigger audience yet? The answer might be that, with releases this good, the DIY scene may soon find itself exposed to more ears than ever before. And if that doesn’t happen, then at the very least, the artists and labels who work tirelessly from the bottom of their hearts to do what they love have every right to be deeply proud of what they’ve created.