This month's mixtape comes entirely from the magazine's open demo inbox, which receives somewhere around forty submissions a week from bands with no label, no publicist and, in a few cases, no other released music at all beyond the file attached to the email.
The selection process is deliberately blunt: two editors listen independently, without seeing artist names or accompanying press notes, and only tracks both editors flag separately make the cut. It's slower than curating from label promos, but it means the list reflects the songs rather than anyone's existing reputation.
“Every track here came from an unsolicited email. That's the only editorial rule.”
This edition leans heavier into slower, more spacious arrangements than usual, a pattern the editors noticed only after the selections were locked — enough submissions this month shared a similarly unhurried tempo that it started to feel like an accidental, unofficial theme for the month's inbox.
Two of the eleven acts featured have since had their tracks pulled from streaming for unrelated rights issues, which the editors mention only to note how genuinely unstable releasing music at this level can be — a song can be a magazine's pick of the month and unavailable to stream three weeks later.
As always, the full tracklist and a short note on each act runs below the fold on the site, and submissions for next month's inbox reopen the first of the month.
