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Hey my indie friend,
No big announcement today. No shiny numbers.
No growth hack hiding in the bushes. Just a quiet moment between tracks, to talk about what’s really happening here.
This Weekly, the Salon, the votes, the submissions… none of it runs on algorithms or ambition.
It runs on curiosity, trust, and a bunch of humans who still believe music deserves time.
If you’re here, reading this, you’re already part of it.
And that’s kind of beautiful.
Inside this issue, you’ll also find music from Venezuela, a live show you might have missed, award-winning artists and 20 tracks waiting to be explored, and if everything doesn’t show up properly in your inbox, open this email in your browser to catch the full experience.
Love 🤍, and happy reading
Mitxoda
Your reading pleasure starts here…
This only works because of you
Let me take a moment this week.
Not to promote. Not to count numbers.
Just to tell you what’s quietly happening here, and why it matters.
Everything I do under Mitxoda is built for the indie community.
Not as a platform. Not as a brand.
But as a living, breathing space where music can circulate freely.
The Weekly.
The Salon Indie radio show.
The submit button.
The Top 100 indie vote.
All of it is free.
All of it is voluntary.
All of it exists because I believe indie music deserves care, time, and attention.
Right now, almost 500 people read this Weekly every week.
And honestly? That already blows my mind.
But imagine this for a second:
If each of you invited just one person to subscribe…
We’d be 1,000 next week.
No algorithm tricks.
Just humans sharing something they love.
That kind of growth doesn’t feed dashboards.
It feeds morale. And sometimes, yes, that really helps.
How I listen (and why I love it)
I don’t listen to everything. I can’t.
I don’t hunt aggressively either.
I drift.
Sometimes through SoundCloud.
Sometimes Bandcamp.
Sometimes Subvert.
Sometimes places I didn’t plan to be.
And once in a while, I stumble upon a gem.
When that happens, I reach out.
And sometimes… magic happens.
That’s what this is about: curiosity without pressure.
About support (full transparency)
Some of you sent donations last year.
Thank you. Deeply. That meant more than you know.
To be fully transparent:
I received more donations than Bandcamp sales last year.
How many tracks did I sell on Bandcamp?
One.
Yes. One.
(LOL 🙂 )
And that’s okay.
Because everything I do here is volunteer work.
No contracts. No hidden agenda.
Your messages, your feedback, your encouragement,
that’s the real fuel.
I should probably compile those messages one day. One day 🙂
The submit button on my site exists for you.
It helps me manage incoming tracks without burning out.
And now, you can even send EPs, albums, unreleased tracks, or projects without streaming links.
It works.
And when it doesn’t, you tell me.
That feedback is how everything improves.
Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Music doesn’t grow without ears.
And creation doesn’t evolve without honest responses, good or bad.
Every message counts. Truly.
After this Weekly lands in your inbox, there’s the other rendez-vous:
Le Salon Indie de Mitxoda.
Episode 37 airs today at 4pm Brussels time, live on OTAT247.
That alone is an incredible gift, and I’m deeply grateful for it.
Then come the rebroadcasts:
OTAT247 on Tuesday
Zenerulett Rádio on Wednesday at noon
My Indie Radio on Saturday
And all of it lives forever on Mixcloud,
including my early, slightly chaotic beginnings (hello cursed microphone).
This show is live. In French (but who cares 🙂 )
It’s for you.
And I genuinely love doing it.
This year, I even started doing two-hour sessions.
Will I keep that pace? Maybe. Maybe not.
Some weeks will be one hour. We’ll see.
Indie also means listening to your own limits.
The Top 100 Indie, slow voting, real choices
And now… the Top 100 Indie.
One vote.
Once per week.
For one track only.
No rush.
No farming.
Just intention.
Call it the Slow Indie Vote.
Or the Mitxoda Vote.
I like both.
You can vote for your own track, of course.
Or choose another one that genuinely moved you.
Nothing to win.
No prizes.
Just love, support, and maybe a future rebroadcast.
It’s imperfect. It glitches.
It’s indie.
If your track isn’t there yet, don’t panic.
I uploaded a huge batch from emails and past submissions, but that’s not sustainable.
From now on, the submit button is the way in.
Slowly, patiently, things will align.
What this Top 100 gives me, too, is insight.
A way to understand your tastes.
And maybe, soon, to connect it more directly with the Salon Indie.
Imagine this:
Tracks featured in the Salon populate a “Featured” column.
You vote for a week.
We review the results the following Friday.
Would you like that?
This only works together
And tell me what’s missing:
A new tool?
A new concept?
A new ritual?
I’m ready to listen.
This space exists because of you.
And it will keep growing, slowly, honestly, if we grow it together.
So… Ready?
Love,
Mitxoda 🤍
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I’ll see you all later today at 4:00 PM (Brussels time) for the 37th episode of Le Salon Indie de Mitxoda, live at salon.mitxoda.be, see you very soon.
Long Indie News
You missed it last week? Well, RedPrint gave a live concert on Youtube, and here is one of my all-time Redprint favorite! Check it out!!
Sometimes when things happen in the world, I try to reconcile peace and music. Today’s events in Venezuela make me wonder how people would react about those attacks (even for freedom, I don’t do politics here) without music. I honestly know nothing about Venezuelian music. I invite you to listen to this gem. It’s quiet, full of comfort, and simply beautiful. Listen here.
Huge congrats to Jay Luke 🎉 : “Ghosts” taking Rock Song of the Year at the World Songwriting Awards is powerful, well-deserved news!
Black Marine & MX THE AMERICAN - HAIR KILLER is officially released this Friday Jan 9! What a collab! With a bit of 🇧🇪 inside… song inspired by a real moment in Belgium and transformed into a fierce collaboration where avant-garde composition, cinematic intensity, and raw rap energy collide.
Hey, wanna be listed here? help me get all that fresh indie news!
» Submit your latest songs here
» Share the latest hot indie news (email me back), and I’ll feature it in another edition!
Don’t miss this week’s historical fact, right below the track listings!
🎧 The Kind Machine — Perfect Day
📅 2026-01-02 • 🇩🇪 Germany
Synth-Pop | Indie Pop
🔗 https://thekindmachine.bandcamp.com/track/perfect-day
An uplifting synth-pop track capturing motion, momentum, and everyday joy.
With shimmering electronics and a driving rhythm, Perfect Day turns small moments into forward-moving energy, bright, optimistic, and quietly addictive.
🎧 Disrupted Being — NEWS
📅 2026-01-05 • 🇩🇰 Denmark
Synthwave | New Romantic | Electronic
🔗 Listen: https://orcd.co/disruptedbeing_news
🛒 Bandcamp: https://disruptedbeing.bandcamp.com
Nearly two years after their last original release Deeper, Disrupted Being return with NEWS, a sharp, thought-provoking track that feels uncomfortably current.
Written years ago yet strikingly relevant today, NEWS questions misinformation, media narratives, and the mental noise we’re constantly fed.
Musically, the band blends old-school new romantic synth textures with their unmistakable, darker twist, polished, tense, and unmistakably Disrupted Being.
🎧 Nikola Zenko — Bury Tomorrow
📅 2026-01-09 • 🇫🇷 France
Indie Folk
🔗 https://soundcloud.com/nikola-zenko/bury-tomorrow-10/s-7RStlUeukAC
A poignant folk closing built around helplessness, grief, and quiet endurance.
Slow tempo, guitar arpeggios, violin, and a heartbeat-like drum pattern create an atmosphere of reflection, watching someone you love fade, and facing the Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation you cannot stop.
🎧 Nikola Zenko — Either / Or
📅 2026-01-09 • 🇫🇷 France
Indie Rock
🔗 https://soundcloud.com/nikola-zenko/either-or-4/s-2PTJcozQWo8
A song about being trapped in a toxic communication loop.
Sparse, melancholic verses suddenly erupt into energetic, electric choruses, mirroring the emotional contrasts of a relationship spiralling toward rupture.
🎧 Minna Ora — Freeze
📅 2025-10-18• 🇫🇮 Finland
Alternative | Indie Pop
🔗 Listen & download: https://lynkify.in/song/freeze/FBZZTS1q
Freeze is a deeply introspective single where Minna Ora explores mental health, depression, and anxiety with honesty and restraint.
Built on a haunting atmosphere and an emotionally charged vocal performance, the song captures feelings of invisibility and inner pain often carried in silence. Despite its darkness, Freeze ultimately leans toward hope.
🎧 The Creeping Candies — Things Have Changed
📅 2026-01-02 • 🇩🇪 Germany
Garage Rock | Indie Rock
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/0LmikJOYvaLdWcQCZWNHUU
Forty years in, and still burning.
Things Have Changed blends 60s garage rock with a subtle country twist, energetic, and full of attitude.
Think Lou Reed’s bite, Iggy Pop’s urgency, and Stones-like swagger, delivered by a band that sounds like they’ve just stepped out of the rehearsal room and straight into the studio.
🎧 Joo Baldi — Opiate Circle
📅 2025-11-28 • 🇩🇪 Germany
Alternative | Dark Indie
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/2IOXYgxMvHdioVZ64Pulpg
An intense emotional descent into darkness, fear, and self-confrontation.
Opiate Circle explores collapse and resilience, the moment you face what haunts you, and decide to rise anyway.
🎧 Isa-Aura — Mon BGM
📅 2025 • 🇫🇷 France
French Pop | Indie Pop
🔗 https://linktr.ee/isaaura
Mon BGM is a playful, sensual French pop track built like a romantic game of attraction.
Through feline metaphors and teasing lyrics, Isa-Aura sings about desire, emotional hesitation, and the irresistible pull that makes us dare everything for someone who fascinates us. Mon BGM fits into French pop and modern “variété”.
🎧 no ordinary fish — DJ Song
📅 2026-01-12 • 🇬🇧 UK
Alternative | Indie Rock
🔗 https://soundcloud.com/noordinaryfish/dj-song
Bass-led, slightly unsettling, and quietly optimistic.
Written in 6/8 time, DJ Song explores missed information, emotional uncertainty, and lost opportunities, inspired by a song heard on the radio but never identified.
Recorded live to keep things human, no AI, no shortcuts, just real music.
🎧 Nick Luddite — Elemental
📅 2026-01-16 • 🇬🇧 UK
Alternative Rock
🔗 https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/nickluddite/elemental
Most of life moves steadily, until something changes everything.
Elemental captures that moment of crossing a threshold, when even small events feel like passing through a portal and nothing will ever be the same again.
🎧 Crowsilver — Winter Never Ends
📅 2025-12-19 • 🇬🇧 UK
Gothic Rock | Progressive / Doom-tinged Rock
🔗 https://soundcloud.com/crowsilver-144112346/winter-never-ends
A haunting winter epic set in a frozen land under northern lights.
Sliding from gothic rock into progressive, almost doom-metal territory, Winter Never Ends is a beautiful lament of despair and endurance.
🎧 JoDan Music — The Gunfight
📅 2026-01-09 • 🇺🇸 USA
Rock | Story-Driven
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/album/1pm7AwIOt9dEXC5xFUX5lr
Welcome to the Deep South, where a Texas wild one meets an Alabama lawman.
Driven by hypnotic rock grooves and expressive guitar work, The Gunfight builds suspense until the final question remains: who was the best?
🎧 pMad — Blood
📅 2026-01-06 • 🇮🇪 Ireland
Post-Punk | Gothic Rock
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/2NTHjHIodalPbclcnN3uUi
A fierce anthem for a world at war.
Blood is dark, urgent, and defiant, calling out faceless power, stolen futures, and lost innocence, while insisting on resistance and return.
Bandcamp listeners were the first to hear the full album in 2026.
🎧 Focus 29 — I Remain
📅 2025-12-12 • 🇸🇰 Slovakia
Chill-Out | Trip-Hop | Electronic
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/309sbiIGRgPQC2htAQ5BMV
The debut single from Focus 29 blends dark synths, live guitar arpeggios, and emotional vocal improvisation by OYA.
Equally suited for deep introspection or relaxed listening, modern, textured, and atmospheric.
🎧 Streams13 — Outside
📅 2025-12-30 • 🇫🇷 France
Alternative
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/1JYB5prLc6NXmVRTPiPlml
A song about the greatest adventure of all: birth.
Dedicated to babies everywhere, and to their mothers. Outside is gentle, emotional, and full of wonder.
🎧 Streams13 — Screaming Outside
📅 2025-12-30 • 🇫🇷 France
Alternative | Electronic-Driven Rock
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/track/7nrQYDzsLk8NEZgzkRx9Ec
Panned funky guitars, electronic drums, heavy bass, layered FX, and lyrics diving head-first into sex, desire, and intensity.
Too much? Maybe. Or maybe just enough.
🎧 Gorilla Tremors — Surfer Girl
📅 2025-12-19 • 🇧🇪 Belgium
Garage Punk | Rock’n’Roll
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/album/2uAyFlkYyWkpfhtJ7yMrbv?si=jZuXMX_GREmi6Kstdg9uqw
Fast, loud, and unapologetic, Surfer Girl is pure old-school garage punk energy.
Drawing from the raw speed of the Ramones, Misfits, MC5, The Damned, and the swagger of The Hives, with a love for classic monster movies, Gorilla Tremors bring rock’n’roll back to its primal roots.
A Frankenstein passion project born from metal musicians craving sweat, speed, and distortion.
🎧 The Sanctity Of Crows — Second Sun (feat. Hollow Words)
📅 2026-01-18 • 🇬🇧 UK / 🇩🇪 Germany
Metal | Post-Metal
🔗 https://www.facebook.com/thesanctityofcrows/
Originally a long instrumental from the debut album Amidst The Gloom (2024), Second Sun is reborn with lyrics and vocals by my friend Christoph Haas (Hollow Words) from Cologne/Köln.
His vocal performance pushes the track deeper into post-metal territory, atmospheric, heavy, and emotionally immersive.
A striking evolution of an already powerful composition.
🎧 The Sanctity Of Crows — The Waiting Room (Radio Edit)
📅 2026-01-29 • 🇬🇧 UK
Heavy Rock | Alternative
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/11Y0bVig6OlW15rDJ0E1QP
A radio edit taken from the upcoming album Time.
Dense, crushing, and emotionally charged, The Waiting Room is shaping up to be the heaviest track TSoC has released to date.
A brutal, focused glimpse into an album still in progress, and already formidable.
🎧 Chaw — Cupid Stunts (EP)
📅 2025-11-20 • 🇺🇸 USA
Metal | Alternative Metal
🔗 https://open.spotify.com/track/3zIz5HR46i7D3RVz7G9Ip6
🌐 https://linktr.ee/chawtx
Chaw’s debut 4-track EP is a raw, no-frills statement of intent.
CUPID STUNTS delivers heavy riffs, blunt energy, and a confrontational edge, exploring frustration, burnout, lost chances, and the cost of not giving everything when it matters.
Across Cupid Stunts, Tapped Out, How to Drain Your Dragon, and Get Up, the EP balances aggression with urgency, short, direct metal tracks that hit fast and leave a mark.
Unpolished in the best way, this first release captures a band burning to be heard.
If you'd like to introduce your latest release, just click here to submit all the details. I’d love to hear about it! 😇 Submit your track here.
Historical Fact: When Music Became Software
On January 9, 2001, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple unveiled iTunes to the world.
Presented by Steve Jobs, iTunes was introduced as a simple yet radical idea: “a jukebox for your digital life”
At a time when MP3s were scattered, badly tagged, and hard to manage, iTunes promised order, clarity, and ease: rip, organize, burn, sync.
This moment quietly reshaped music culture.
It paved the way for the iPod, the iTunes Music Store (2003), and ultimately the shift toward digital music consumption that would redefine how artists distribute and listeners discover music.
Long before streaming algorithms and platform debates, this launch marked the beginning of music becoming software, with all the creative freedom and tension that would follow.
Sometimes, revolutions start with a jukebox. A digital one.
Keep the Historical Fact?
Until Next Week: This Space Is Yours.
Nothing here is optimized for speed. Nothing is built to please algorithms.
It’s built to last.
Through listening without pressure. Through honest feedback.
Through one vote, one track, one shared moment at a time.
So if you’ve been reading, listening, voting, submitting, or simply being here… thank you.
And if you feel like inviting one more person into this space, that’s how it grows. Naturally.
I’ll keep doing my part. You keep doing yours. If you want. At indie pace.
We’ll figure out the rest together.
With love, peace, and patience,
🖤 Mitxoda
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