Good Heart Dumb Brain
Some Party is a newsletter sharing the latest in independent Canadian rock'n'roll, curated by Adam White. Each edition explores punk, garage, psych, and otherwise uncategorizable indie rock, drawing lines from proto to post and taking some weird diversions along the way.
DealbreakerNew Sides
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
This week, Welland, Ontario's Dealbreaker return with New Sides, their debut full-length. The 10-song set retains the band's early signatures - bodyslamming power-pop delivered with an endearing gravel-growl that heyday-Punknews would have lost it for. This time out, everything's bigger - both in terms of production and sheer confidence.
On the album's themes, the band shared:
"This record is an honest critique of the many different avenues the people in this desperate world take to fail one another and themselves, whether it be due to futility, inaction, willful ignorance or anything in between. Ghosts of the past, present acquaintances, the unseen figures behind closed doors — even the faithful narrators themselves — all are on trial.
There are glimmers of a brighter, different, version of the world hoped after; but it is only in spite of how things have come to be and conditional on its transformation. At the end of it all, at least we can cling to one another."
M.C. Cunningham produced the record, with Vince Soliveri (Pillea, The Dirty Nil) engineering and mixing at Boxcar Sound. Dan Weston mastered. Dealbreaker features Connor Johnstone on vocals, Canyon Carvers' Nick Giammarco on guitar, Bil Huffman on guitar, Josh Van Hezewyk on bass, and Scott Brady drumming.
It's undoubtedly the result of Johnstone's day job as a designer, but Dealbreaker's felt conceptually solid from the start. They've likely spent more energy on that aspect than most bands even bother (save, perhaps, fellow Wellanders Dboy). And while visuals and branding quirks, of course, mean nothing if the audio comes up short, with New Sides that grandiosity feels earned. Dealbreaker may be trying to manifest a greater career than small gigs at the punk bar in downtown Niagara Falls, but I'm grateful I got to see them there.
New Sides is out April 3 through Toll Free Records in Canada and Late Again Records stateside.
SafewordFortune Teller
Watch "A Lot More Work" on YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Dartmouth indie-pop mainstays Safeword are back with Fortune Teller, their fourth full-length. The eight-song record finds singer/keyboardist Karen Foster, guitarist Daniel Watt, bassist Greg Baller, and drummer Brian Foster working again with producer Charles Austin (Outtacontroller, Prism Shores), who aimed to capture the band's live energy through a largely off-the-floor approach. Francisco Lopes engineered at Ocean Floor Recording, with Alex Burris mastering at Fang.
The band shared a few thoughts on select songs in the lead-up to the release. Reflecting on "Superpower," the band comments that the song finds them:
"...once again thinking about getting older, the purpose of life, comparison (the thief of joy!), envy and shame, driven along by a freight train combination of piano, drums, bass and guitar."
I'm firmly in my mid 40s so indie rock meditations on aging are right in my existential wheelhouse. A younger listener might relate differently, but they've got their own shit to deal with. You can find the track, along with several of the album's tracks, accompanied by visuals on YouTube.
Fortune Teller, available everywhere now, follows 2024's Can't Hate You Forever. Karen Foster also continues to make noise with Nova Scotian supergroup Shoulder Season, who issued a pair of new singles in 2025.
Misha Bower"Surrender"
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
London, Ontario's Misha Bower returned in March with "Surrender," her first new single since 2019's Trying to Have It All album. While best known as a member of the beloved folk-gospel collective Bruce Peninsula, Bower's haunting yet beautiful solo material hits just as hard. The "Surrender" players include multi-instrumentalist Derek Durant (OMBIIGIZI, Sub Drop), who also hosted the sessions at his Studio Habalayon, and guitarist Will Kidman of the mighty Constantines. Alex Gamble (Fucked Up, Alvvays, Pony) mixed and mastered the track.
Bower shared some thoughts on how the song came together:
"As so often happens, it was in the midst of a hard time that a song came along and insisted its way into my life as something I could create, develop, nurture - focus on as a path for at least starting to forge a way through. The process of it moving from fragmented to fully realized has been a friendship-deepening collaborative effort with some of the most intuitive musical minds I know."
Bower notes the behind-the-scenes support from her Bruce Peninsula bandmate Neil Haverty, credited with helping her "cross the finish line." Haverty's also been quietly active with new solo work, most recently sharing "Chariot" in December.
Misha Bower's Trying to Have It All arrived in 2019, with Bruce Peninsula's last full-length, No Earthly Sound, following in early 2020 (a sanity-saving quarantine soundtrack for many, including myself).
Bitter FictionsAmethyst & Emerald
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Experimental guitarist Devin Friesen recently resurfaced his Bitter Fictions project with Amethyst & Emerald, a long-gestating LP with pre-pandemic roots. While now based in Calgary, the artist traces the record to an earlier phase of life in Montreal, where he tracked guitar improvisations to vintage cassettes in varying degrees of decay. Friesen revealed:
"Depending who you ask, among artists in Canada it's a punchline and/or a rite of passage. Leaving home and going to Montreal. There's likely more going on than where you're coming from, and even if that's one of the bigger cities, until more recently both post-secondary and rent were more accessible. There's an appeal.
And if you're serious about your craft, the coldness will test and temper you. Some pockets will thaw and welcome with a rising warmth. Others will only reveal more ice to slip on. Whatever made you unique back home? It's a footnote. It's not good or bad, more a reminder. Plenty of time to work through it all Winter."
That winter, 2020, marked the onset of the pandemic and a stretch of profound loss for Friesen. He returned to these tracks, mere skeletons, years later and "tempered by grief, time, [and] experience." Rearranged in Calgary with added synthesizers, the results are a set of pensive, atmospheric instrumentals broken into four weighty tracks.
The audio arrived on March 13 via Friesen's Shaking Box Music with a limited vinyl run.
Friesen last appeared in these pages as one half of Frozen Lake, a duo with Tough Age drummer Jesse Locke. They issued October in 2024. Bitter Fictions released a collection of recordings dubbed Phantoms that same year.
Excited To DieSick Til Death
Watch "Compliance Officer" on YouTube - Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Lo-fi hardcore outfit Excited To Die is back with Sick Til Death, the ramshackle follow-up to their 2023 debut This Is A Life?. The Dartmouth band wastes no time, crashing through six songs in six minutes, boasting a throwback sound that never sounds restrained by the genre's history nor at all concerned with its modern tropes. There's a looseness to the band's attack that feels genuine - a basement show or garage vibe, rather than something tuned for the pit.
Excited To Die features KC Spidle (Diamondtown, Husband & Knife, Dog Day) on guitar, Cody Googoo (Booji Boys, Mutated Void) on bass, James Macneil on drums, and Rod Meade Sperry of Equimerton on vocals. Googoo and Spidle also play together in the garage act Gemstones.
The new tape arrived in early March through Googoo's Don't Wanna Talk Records.
Canyon CarversFour
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
When it rains, it pours.
The Welland rock quartet Canyon Carvers are back after more than a decade on hiatus with Four, a new four-song EP - available on vinyl through the newly founded Toll Free Records. Despite the time off, the band retains the endearing qualities that made them staples of the Niagara scene: an earnest blend of clean hooks, rugged vocal delivery, and a heart-on-sleeve vulnerability.
Bandmates Nick Giammarco and Riley Simpson engineered the set at Kennedy-Gould Recording Co, with mixing and mastering performed by Vince Soliveri.
As mentioned above, Giammarco is currently serving with the Welland punks Dealbreaker. Canyon Carvers shares a release show with that band at the Niagara Artists Centre in St. Catharines on April 17, alongside the related Welland/Nashville duo Fear Elements.
Canyon Carvers last issued All of This in 2020, an unearthed 2016 collaboration with Julia Allen of Toronto dream pop act For Keeps. The band's last proper full-length, Aside and Beside, dates back to 2014.
The Boojums"Karate Man"/"Scott Pilgrim"
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Port Hawkesbury's red-hot garage trio The Boojums pay tribute to their Nova Scotian forebears with a new 7" covers single, out May 15 through Having Fun Records. The 45 tackles "Karate Man" by The Super Friendz (from their 1995 debut Mock Up, Scale Down) and "Scott Pilgrim" by Plumtree (from 1997's Plumtree Predicts the Future). The Boojums explained:
"As rock musicians from Nova Scotia, we stand on the shoulders of many local giants. The 1990's in Halifax spawned so many great bands like Sloan, Thrush Hermit, Jale, Plumtree, and The Super Friendz (to name just a few), who carved a path for kids like us (at the time) to aspire to. This is our little way of saying thank you to those who came before us and gave us stars to shoot for!"
The Boojums features Willie Stratton (Beach Bait) on guitar and vocals, Sara Johnston (Skunk Motel, The Surfrajettes) on vocals and 8-string bass, and drummer Peter MacInnis (Beech Hill). The band recorded the tracks independently, with Charles Austin, fittingly one of The Super Friendz, mixing the record.
The single follows the Boojums' barn-burning self-titled debut LP, released last October through the We Are Busy Bodies imprint, Having Fun. The group's currently over in Europe, with shows lined up daily through the end of May.
Way Too FestJune 13, 2026
I've mentioned Toll Free Records a few times in this edition. That label's teaming up with the legendary Rex Hotel, The Bank Art House, and Black Sheep Coffee Roasters to launch a new music festival in Welland, Ontario this June. Way Too Fest is set to play out across multiple stages in the Rose City on June 13, 2026.
Artists of all genres are encouraged to apply, particularly since I'll be there, and whenever the scene caters to my convenience, the universe smiles. There's an application form online now.
