Swapmeet – I Know!

Swapmeet formed as teenagers in Adelaide, bonding over Pavement and Sonic Youth in early 2020s basement sessions. They put out a debut single in late 2023, followed by the ‘Oxalis’ EP in mid-2024, and spent the next year building a live reputation serious enough to win Best Performance at SXSW Sydney. Now they’ve signed to LA’s Winspear and “I Know!” is the first thing out of the gate.

It’s a good entry point. Fuzzy guitars, a driving rhythm section, and Venus O’Broin’s vocals cutting through the mix — the song sits at the jangle pop end of shoegaze without going full distortion wall. Maxwell Elphick handles lead guitar, Joshua Doherty bass, Jack Medlyn drums, and the four of them wrote, recorded, produced and engineered it themselves, with mixing by Hamish Mitchell and mastering by Andre Eremin. The production sounds like a band that’s spent time figuring out how to capture themselves properly, not just document a rehearsal.

The song came out of a practice jam — O’Broin is upfront about that: “‘I Know!’ was written accidentally”, she says. “Unlike the other songs on the album, this song kind of wrote itself. The lyrics alike arose pretty spontaneously too, without much over-analysing or fluff. I Know! I Know! I Know! You know”? The spontaneity shows in the best way. It doesn’t feel laboured. The chorus hooks you the first time and stays there.

Winspear founder Jared Jones puts it plainly: “Their songs balance emotional weight with an undeniable sense of play — and they certainly know how to end a song with a bang in a way that has you reaching for the replay button”. That’s not wrong. The band heads to SXSW in Austin in March for their US debut, with three shows scheduled. If the live show matches the single, it won’t be the last time we hear about them over there.

Out on Winspear.

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