Meltway

Few bands wear their influences as openly as Meltway, yet the Danish quartet, later a five-piece, make the 1990s shoegaze scene feel newly lived-in. Their guitars are crusty and heavily distorted, their drums are inventive, and their vocals drift in airy, weightless figures above the noise. Based in Esbjerg, they build songs where abrasion and tenderness pull against each other.

Their debut EP, Everytime, was self-released in 2020, two years after the band formed in late 2018 as a four-piece. Its lo-fi, heavily textured sound suits a set of daydreamy songs about heartbreak and self-disorientation, and it caught the attention of KEXP after a sale on Bandcamp. Thomas Brunbjerg then spent a year in Estonia in 2020, and guitarist Kristoffer Møller stood in for him. When Thomas returned, the band kept Kristoffer, becoming a five-piece with three guitars, which gave them more room to develop their songwriting. Their album Nothing Is Real followed in 2024.